Sandpoint Loses Volunteer Force For Firefighting Members Won’T Serve Until City Hires Chief

The entire force of Sandpoint Fire Department volunteers quit Wednesday night and turned their firefighting gear in to the City Council.

With no volunteers, the job of fighting fires falls on seven paid firefighters who staff the station two at a time. If there is a fire, they’ll have to rely on each other to respond during off hours and on mutual aid from other fire districts.

The 10 volunteers, with their families and supporters, marched into the council chambers with their gear while volunteer president Chris Blood made a statement to the council.

“It has become very clear that Mayor (David) Sawyer, the City Council and Public Safety Director (Bill) Kice all refuse to accept two issues: The level of service has declined to an unsafe level for both the public and firefighters. Public Safety Director Kice does not understand the fire service, and cannot handle the job of administering the fire department,” Blood read from a prepared letter to elected officials.

Blood said the volunteers would not serve the city unless it hired a fire chief.

In October 1996, former Sandpoint Fire Chief Don Keck retired after a heart attack. The City Council appointed Kice, who was the police chief, as interim public safety director until a new fire chief could be hired.

Instead of replacing Keck, on Feb. 19, 1997, the council appointed Kice as full-time public safety director, responsible both for fire and police duties. The move saved the city about $50,000 a year.

Contacted at home Wednesday evening, Kice said he had no idea that the volunteers were so disgruntled.

“I knew nothing about this from the fire department at all,” he said. “It’s a sad thing that the volunteers are doing this.”

Councilman Ray Miller, presiding over the council meeting in Sawyer’s absence, chastised the volunteers for their action.

“I’m somewhat disappointed and saddened that such a rash decision has been made on erroneous information,” he said. “I hope you bring serious thought to the line you’ve drawn, because it may be irreversible.”

Blood said it was a huge moral dilemma for the volunteers to abandon their paid counterparts.

“But the safety aspect is so important, we had to do something extreme to get the public’s attention,” he said.

When Kice was hired to replace Keck, firefighters and other emergency personnel expressed concern that Kice didn’t have the background for the position, and that the fire department and public safety would suffer from a lack of leadership.

In addition, Kice doesn’t go to structure fires. That means the city’s firefighting force was reduced by one.

Since then, the city has instituted new policies, including one that requires that on-duty firefighters wait until they reach the scene of a fire before they call for back-up. According to federal rules, firefighters can’t enter a house until four firefighters are on the scene. Firefighters think they lose valuable time because of the new policy.

The City Council also has discussed having the fire department stop responding to medical aid calls.

Since the change in management, the city has lost two experienced paid firefighters and a few volunteers, some of whom quit in frustration with the city. That has reduced the number of firefighters who are showing up for emergencies, they said.

Former captain Dan Blood, father of the president of the volunteer organization, retired early last year out of frustration.

He said fire captains are forced to take on the duties and responsibilities of the chief because Kice can’t do it and there’s no midlevel superior to take his place. With no midlevel manager, there’s no one to provide day-to-day consistency within the department.

“The paid seven who are still there are in a survival mode,” he said.

Meanwhile, morale among paid firefighters has collapsed like a fire-flattened house.

Councilwoman Sue Haynes said the city needed to listen to the volunteers.

“I think it’s time we stop just pushing. We need to listen to the people involved,” she said.

The city put out a call for more volunteers in December, and eight people signed up to take a several-month training course on the essentials of firefighting. The training was scheduled to begin this month, but Kice canceled it because there were not enough applicants.

IDAHO HEADLINE: Volunteer firefighters turn in their gear