By GARRET JAROS/Lincoln Chronicle
YACHATS – Whether the Yachats area will continue to have its own designated ambulance service is at the crux of discussions among the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District board and its administrator.
The board held a special meeting Wednesday to discuss whether Yachats Fire should take on ambulance service in south Lincoln County, something that has been handled by non-profit South Lincoln Ambulance since 1967.
South Lincoln had been relying on paying Yachats Fire a nominal fee to house the ambulance and staff it – something the non-profit which is embroiled in a lawsuit from a crash in January 2024 – can no longer afford to do.
The board is awaiting the results of a feasibility study it asked the Special Districts Association of Oregon to conduct and advise it whether operating an ambulance service is financially viable for the district and whether it should include transporting patients to hospitals in Newport or Florence or simply serve as onsite triage until an ambulance from Pacific West Ambulance arrives.
PacWest holds contracts for the rest of Lincoln County and has been loaning South Lincoln Ambulance a vehicle after its ambulance was totaled during a fatal crash in January 2024. The ambulance nonprofit and fire district are being sued for $3 million each by the mother of a Waldport woman killed when she collided with the SLA ambulance driven by a fire district employee. A passenger in the car during the crash, a student at Waldport High School, is still hospitalized and unconscious.
The lawsuit and settlement talks have not yet been resolved.
Yachats Fire’s administrator and volunteer chief, Frankie Petrick, also serves on the three-person SLA board. She told the Lincoln Chronicle on Thursday the only way SLA could keep operating would be to hire its own paramedic crew — which it cannot afford.
Decision time
South Lincoln Ambulance is offering to give its new ambulance and all of its assets to Yachats Fire in order to keep ambulance service operating out of the Yachats station.
The new $420,000 ambulance was paid for by insurance from the accident and is currently housed at the Yachats fire station. If SLA were to keep operating the ambulance, it would pay $84,808 annually for a full array of insurance, a 125 percent increase over its current premium.
If the fire district were to take over the ambulance service, it would add an annual cost of $2,700 to the district’s current insurance policy. But it would need to be staffed, which brings in the issue of whether the district has enough personnel to respond to fire and other emergency calls while also transporting people to hospitals.
Petrick told the board Wednesday that PacWest had requested its ambulance be returned on Thursday. South Lincoln’s insurance, which is currently covering the PacWest ambulance, also covers the new ambulance until the policy renews May 26.
Board members decided Wednesday to register the new ambulance with the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles and the Oregon Health Authority and to have it stay in operation under South Lincoln Ambulance until they can touch base with the special districts association about the results of its study and to consult further with its attorney about transferring assets.
“South Lincoln Ambulance can just keep doing what we’re doing until the board decides they want to do something different and find out exactly how that dissolution should happen,” Petrick told the board.
Complicating any transfer of assets are South Lincoln’s bylaws which state if it were to dissolve, half the assets would go to the now defunct Waldport Fire Department. Board member Doug Myers was tasked with acting as liaison with the special districts association and the district’s lawyer counsel to review all pertinent documents and findings and report back for further discussion at the boards regularly scheduled meeting April 14.
There is a whole list of things to determine if this risk is worth the benefit to the fire district, Myers told the board. He also acknowledged the risk-benefit to the citizens of Yachats in having to depend on PacWest for ambulance service.
“But yet if we’re going to seriously consider this, we need all the information …” Myer said.
- Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues for the Lincoln Chronicle, formerly YachatsNews, and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com
Comment Policy