What does it take to be a Dallesport Volunteer Firefighter? A lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
Dallesport Fire Department: Derek Comstock, Rojelio Buenrostraf, Mark Rodriguez, Sawyer Brasel, Brandy Wolf, Brad Swing, Issac Night, Ethan Este, Darren Lacock, Andrew Lacock, and Tyrena Comstock. Second row: Sam Smith, Austin Morris, Dylan Wombolt, Joshua Sandoz, Chris Lambert
By Cole Goodwin
Seventy percent of fire districts in the U.S. are staffed entirely by volunteers and Klickitat County Fire District 6, better known as Dallesport Fire is one of them.
And like many other volunteer fire districts around the nation, they face challenges such as staffing, equipment and maintenance costs, and healthcare challenges.
There’s been a decrease in volunteerism over the years that has led to staffing shortages.
Today a crew of about twenty-five volunteers provide fire protection and EMS services to over 2,100 residents in a 40 square mile area of the Eastern Gorge, including Dallesport and Murdock. They also have a five county mutual aid agreement with Wasco, Sherman, Hood River, Klickitat, and Skamania Counties.
In 2007 they also signed an auto aid agreement with Mid-Columbia Fire & Rescue.
Since then, Dallesport Fire has had a 60-70 call volume increase per year.
“We respond to just about every fire call that they call us on,” said Darren Lacock, 53. He has been a volunteer firefighter in the Columbia River Gorge for over twenty-five years.
And he is now the Assistant Fire Chief at Dallesport Fire. He’s three years from retiring.
He’s seen it all.
“We go out on all kinds of calls, structure fire, wildland fire, medical calls, MVA’s, airport fire’s, crash rescue… whatever the call is we have to respond,” said Lacock.
Despite higher call volumes and staff fluctuations, the volunteers at the department continue to show up - for their community: neighbors and friends who need help.
“Staffing varies, it just depends on everyone’s work schedule,” said Lacock. “We typically have between five and six people respond to every call. A few years ago we would have 10 or so people responding to every call.”
“We lost some people to different jobs, and people moved. When there’s a big fire we see a lot of people looking to join and train with the fire district. But when the slow time of year comes and they’re training but not utilizing it on a fire, they have a tendency to feel like ‘why am I here’ and they stop coming, so we lose some folks,” said LaCock.
All volunteers are required to complete training from the International Fire Service Accreditation Congress (IFSAC) and National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). The NFPA has over 300 consensus codes and standards intended to minimize the possibility and effects of fire and other risks.
“Most of the people in this department are trained to Firefighter II, which is structure fires, and we’re all red carded wildland firefighters.”
An Incident Qualification Card is commonly called a Red Card and it means firefighters are qualified to do the required job when arriving on an incident.
They also have several Emergency Medical Technicians on staff to respond to medical emergencies.
“Usually if there’s a stroke or heart attack or something major, we all respond to the call. I don’t know if you’ve ever done CPR, but you get tired quickly. So, it helps to have as many people respond as possible.”
“Unfortunately, I’ve done CPR more than a hundred times, and I’ve probably got three saves,” says Lacock.
He goes quiet for a moment before continuing.
“It’s just the way it works out sometimes. But we show up and we give it a hundred and fifty percent to try and save somebody. Because that’s what we do. We often sit back and say that we may not need or hope we don’t need these services. But please know that when you do have an emergency- you’ve got a good group of guys and gals that are here and ready to crawl out of bed at 2 a.m. and we don’t care what the emergency is, we’re there.”
The crew typically trains on Tuesday nights at the Dallesport Fire Station. Captain John Wolf usually leads training.
“In the fall we start into the Firefighter I and Firefighter II courses. Everybody, even me, is required to go through training,” says Lacock. “That's the standard we’ve set especially for officers, since they are going to lead and be in command on a fire.”
“On structure fires either the Chief, Rhet Howard, myself, John the Captain or Brad the lieutenant lead the crew in.”
Training is a mixture of hands-on work and book learning, but Lacock says that while the book can teach you a lot, nothing beats hands-on learning when it comes to firefighter training.
“No fire that I have been on in 25 years has ever been the same,” said Lacock. “You have to know how to take what you’ve learned from the book and modify it to make it work for what you need to do.”
Being a volunteer means you don’t get paid, but Lacock says they’ve been working on getting a stipend going.
“We’re working on getting these guys a stipend per call, per event, outside of fire calls,” says Lacock. “We want to reward these guys for taking time away from their families to come out and respond to emergencies.”
So, how much would the stipend be?
“Tentatively our goal is $5 a call and $2-$3 per event,” said Lacock. “It’s an incentive to try and hang on and respond as much as you can because when we issue the check in December, there’s your Christmas money to go buy Christmas presents.”
In 2018 Dallesport Fire passed a tax levy at a rate of $0.90 per $1,000.00 of property value, said Lacock.
“Prior to 2018 we were operating on $54,000 a year,” he said. “I want to say, we’re up to a $150,000 annual budget or so now.”
While volunteers work without pay, equipment sure doesn’t.
“Most of the equipment we have we got through blood, sweat and tears,” says Lacock.
“It’s just one of those things. We make do. We fundraise. We do a firework stand, we do a pancake breakfast, things like that. We got most of our turnouts, wildland gear, and our structure fighting gear through grants.”
“The County got money every year from landfill grants and our community here in Dallesport always got behind the fire department to make sure that we had what we needed.
And because the current fire station lacks adequate housing for all the equipment, it has to sit out in the weather year round.
Maintenance costs amount to $8,000-$10,000 of the annual budget.
“It costs more than our budget, but our volunteers come and donate their time. So, we do most of the repairs ourselves.”
“We do have a mobile fire apparatus repair company that will come out when we get into something that we can’t deal with.”
The fleet is a mix of old and new equipment. On their wishlist? A new tender.
“The one we’ve got is a 1980. We have a few newer brush trucks, and a newer engine, but our tenders are the only thing we haven’t been able to come up with funding to replace.”
They’ve also got their hopes set on building a new fire station.
“That’s our next big thing. The last estimate we got was close to $12 million.”
Want to be a volunteer firefighter? Make sure you’ve got a plan in case of an injury.
Lacock says that other than money, the other challenge facing volunteer firefighter departments is healthcare.
“We have a form of insurance through the Board of Volunteer Firefighters and Reserve Officers,” said Lacock. “Basically if somebody does get hurt we take them to the hospital and we submit an accident report and then when the bills come in we send them a copy of the bill and they send us back a check.”
“But it’s kind of a hardship placed on the volunteer, especially if you’re injured. We had one gentleman that got hurt. He was off for three months and almost lost his home because of that process, and the delay in them approving and sending us a check back.”
“That’s part of why we stress trying not to get injured. Some of the volunteers here have insurance, some of them don’t. All of the folks here are hardworking folks, but there’s not a lot of companies around here that provide health insurance.”
“We all have to look out for each other. Sure there’s different personalities here, but when our turnouts go on and we walk through that door none of that makes a difference. We’re a team and we rely on each other,” said Lacock.
Despite the potential hardships, volunteers keep coming back.
“We’re not just a volunteer fire agency, we do a lot of different stuff. We fill swimming pools. We’ll go clear brush for somebody that can’t do it themselves. We do burns for people that have burn piles. We do the can food drive for project ELFF. We’re a very active department in the community, and we do more than just provide a fire service.” said Lacock.
Want to become a volunteer firefighter?
Stop by the Dallesport Fire Department on Tuesday nights at 6!
How to donate to support Dallesport Volunteer Fire District 6:
Email Rhet Howard Volunteer Fire Chief at rhet.dallesportfire@gmail.com
or send checks to:
P.O. Box 215
Dallesport, WA 98617
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