Emergency in Tenmile illustrates importance of rural responders helping each other, new Yachats chief says

By GARRET JAROS/Lincoln Chronicle

YACHATS – The sound of sirens piercing the early morning air is never a good sign – but it also means help is on the way and with it the possibility that everything might be okay.

Last Saturday was one of those mornings for Yachats firefighters/paramedics when it was all-hands-on-deck after an emergency call of a man with chest pains just south of the Lincoln County line in the Tenmile community.

The call was one of several highlighted during conversations Monday at the monthly board meeting of the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District that centered on the importance of mutual aid agreements and coordinating communication between fire agencies working to cover a vast area with limited manpower.

The Yachats district has an automatic aid agreement with Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue and a mutual aid agreement up for review in July with Florence-based Western Lane Fire & EMS Authority. Automatic aid obligates a response for certain types of calls unless the primary agency cancels the need for assistance. Mutual aid is a call for assistance at any time that can accepted or rejected.

In an effort to increase protections for the district, the Yachats fire board on Monday went a step further by approving an intergovernmental agreement with Seal Rock Fire District for shared volunteer services, mutual aid coverage and increased financial efficiency.

The initial one-year agreement, which will be reviewed at six months, will go into effect upon approval by the Seal Rock board at its monthly meeting June 18.

Challenging call

The call Saturday for the man with chest pains just north of Searose Beach – an unprotected area not served by any fire district – served as a reminder of the importance of aid agreements, Yachats’ acting fire chief Jeff Mathia told the board.

Dispatchers said the man was about a quarter mile into his property in an area not accessible by emergency vehicles, including the South Lincoln Ambulance which unlike Yachats fire district – is required to cover that area of Lane County until the end of June when West Lane’s ambulance service takes over.

However, because of the current staffing agreement between the ambulance and Yachats fire, the call eventually meant emptying the station of two on-duty crew, two volunteers and two firefighters who had just gotten off duty, to mount the required six-person response after the man went into cardiac arrest.

Mathia asked West Lane to help by bringing a four-wheeler and a basket to extricate the man, but an unexplained lag in communication between the Lane County dispatch center and the Salem-based center used by the Yachats district delayed their departure which left Mathia to call in assistance from Central Coast.

“Seal Rock was attending a wildland burn training so they only had one crew member on and were not able to come cover the station,” Mathia told the board. “However, they did monitor our district while we were gone for 3 1/2 hours.”

Although the man later passed away in Florence, Mathia said, the incident showed the importance of mutual aid agreements. The Yachats chief added that “in order to provide good service” he has offered to establish a new mutual aid response model to assist West Lane when they take over ambulance service in the Tenmile area.

“What is nice is we can say ‘No’,” Mathia said. “So if there’s certain calls I don’t believe we should be sending all our resources out of district for, we will have that choice. Right now, I don’t have much choice, I have to send the ambulance.”

The cascading response eventually involved the South Lincoln Ambulance along with two fire engines and a brush truck from Yachats, a Central Coast engine and a West Lane rescue unit. “The call depleted our south county resources, except for one unit out of Seal Rock, to cover all of south county,” Mathia said.

Board president Doug Myers asked Mathia to pass on a “well done” to the crews. “From hearing the stories, it was very taxing, physically and mentally,” Myers said.

“We get very few challenging calls in our career,” Mathia responded. “I will say that’s probably one.”

Driving home the importance of aid agreements were overlapping fire calls May 16 which had Yachats aiding Central Coast on a fatal house fire in Tidewater when the call of a structure fire in Yachats came in. “So we had two structure fires called in within a half hour of each other,” Mathia said. The fire in Yachats turned out to be an illegal backyard burn that resulted in a $200 fine.

In total the district responded to 71 calls in May, 14 of which were assisting other agencies and 28 which were general medical that resulted in 19 ambulance transports.

Mathia says he been diligent about not having Yachats district taxpayers pay for out-of-district calls, including billing an RV owner $1,000 after his vehicle caught fire last month.

“We are beginning to make movement on cost recovery for those that don’t live or pay taxes in our district,” Mathia said. “Or those that just blatantly violate some of our burn permit rules.”

Myers said Mathia’s report showed the district is moving in the right direction.

“This is further evidence of the change we made to have a responding fire chief, mutual aid — an agreement with Seal Rock — and to attract our own volunteers,” Myers said. “We didn’t expect it to be so quick, that we were going to be showing back-to-back calls where Yachats units were able to respond and handle those with the assistance of our mutual aid and auto aid partners.”

In other business:

• The district received an $18,000 grant from the Three Rivers Foundation, the charitable arm of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians.
• The district extended the staffing agreement with South Lincoln Ambulance until July 31 to allow Lincoln County counsel Kristin Yuille to determine who is responsible for the current coverage area. The decision comes after the recent discovery that the ambulance nonprofit and the fire district jointly applied to Lincoln County to provide ambulance service for 2022-27. However, the contract signed by county commissioners in 2022 assigning one of the county’s five ambulance service districts to South Lincoln Ambulance lists only the nonprofit as the provider.
• South Lincoln Ambulance also agreed to increase the amount it pays to the district for staffing over the next month to $5,000. It had been $3,000.

• Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues for the Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected]