Letter to the editor: Don’t fire chief

For the board to take this action shows a disregard for the good of the district, the safety of the volunteers, and a disconnect from the realities of the department.

In just a few years as chief, Jim Appleton has taken the Mosier volunteers from almost nothing to a medically competent EMS organization, and well on the way to a competent rural firefighting department.

And with 80 percet of the calls being medical, that is the correct priority. With a district of only 1400 people spread over 22 square miles, it’s no small thing to find a dozen people willing to spend the over 200 unpaid hours it takes to get trained and certified as EMTs (with 5 currently spending an additional 400 hours to be certified as Advanced EMTs) — all to give us the best chance of getting to someone quickly in an emergency. And in that same time, Jim has recruited and trained a core group of firefighters who have demonstrated enough competence to recently improve the ISO rating for the district to its lowest rating in years (which saves the entire community a lot on property insurance).

When explaining his decision tonight, LeeRoy Herman, a district board member said: “We managed perfectly well for years without spending any money. The town didn’t burn down. We never lost a firefighter.”

The voters in the 2010 election to create the new district and give it a budget disagreed with that assertion.

They saw the microwave fire cresting the hills beside Mosier. They heard that the department’s equipment was decrepit. They understood that the training was ad-hoc. And they voted to make a change. Unfortunately, the fire board does not agree with the public — with the exception of the board’s president, Darin Molesworth and Glenn Bartholomew, (who promptly announced his resignation).

In closing, I would ask the board to consider where they are going to find a replacement within 30 days who is:

• Qualified to respond as a firefighter and EMT

• Willing to respond 24 hours a day from Mosier

• And is happy to do this for $18,000 a year.

I strongly urge the board to reconsider their decision.

Charles Young

Mosier