Questions raised over West End FD equipment

There was contention over what to do with equipment at the West End Fire Department. Current Board President, John Carpenter presented a proposal to the county commissioners on Thursday evening to sell some of the equipment. Board members Tom Anderson and Mark Wasseen were also present at the meeting.

Prior to the beginning of the meeting, Bruce Charles, former board president of the West End Fire Department, handed out a three-page “Citizens’ Petition to save the West End Fire Department.”

“We understand certain West End VFD trustees initially planned to give away WEVFD equipment to Idaho. Now they have apparently decided to sell significant amounts of equipment originally acquired to protect the West End Volunteer Fire District and other parts of Mineral County through the volunteer and contractual practice of Mutual Aid,” the petition stated.

Carpenter cited the reason they wanted to sell some of it was because of the expense of insuring equipment that is no longer in service or is in disrepair. Currently their insurance policy costs $12,500 for the year. Anderson said they could sell it and use the money for current expenses. Although a complete list was not available, some of the equipment in question includes a bulldozer, a front-end loader, a compressed air foam cannon on one of the fire trucks, and auxiliary pumps.

Charles said he was instrumental in securing much of the equipment in question and said it was not bought with taxpayer money, but with grants. He said he did not want to see the equipment sold or given away. Charles countered that if insurance costs were the issue then they should drop those items from the policy and put those items into storage.

However, Anderson questioned keeping equipment that was in disrepair. St. Regis Fire Chief Jerry Dockter made some recommendations on inexpensive repairs that could be investigated to get the equipment in working order.

There was also discussion regarding the lack of experienced volunteers to run the equipment, and Carpenter said several volunteer firefighters didn’t have their red cards, or incident qualification cards. But current West End Fire Chief Richard Hughes and volunteer fire fighter, Donna Richter, disagreed and said most of them did have red cards. According to Richter, there are approximately eight volunteers with the West End Volunteer Fire Department and six of them have their red cards.

As to the question of lack of training or experience with the equipment, Charles and Dockter said they let volunteers use it whenever they wanted, even if it was for personal use. Hughes said he didn’t like the equipment used for personal tasks, saying it wasn’t right to use gas on the taxpayers dime.

“As long as they returned it in good working order and with a full tank of gas that was fine. The more experience they have working with the equipment, the better,” said Dockter.

Because an actual list of the equipment in question was not available, Commissioner Roman Zylawly said they did not want to make any decisions.

“This needs to be researched some more, and see what it will cost to repair the equipment,” he said. “We are glad you’re taking an interest and are managing the department,” he said to the board.