Latest Report Shows Humboldt County Fire Fighters Responded to Over 18,000 Calls For Service

Flames poured from the building on Pine Street in Garberville during the early morning hours. [Photo from former Redway Fire Chief Brian Anderson]

The Humboldt County Fire Chiefs’ Association has presented an annual report to the Board of Supervisors, including breakdowns of emergency incident responses, volunteer hours and the “challenges and needs” of local departments.

Supervisors were briefed on firefighting and emergency response services at their June 3 meeting.

Telegraph Ridge Volunteer Fire Department Chief Tanner Speas, the association’s incoming president, said the county’s 39 fire and emergency services district received 18,561 calls for service in 2023, the year covered in the report.

The calls included 16,280 emergency incident responses.

“So that’s two calls an hour every single hour of every single day of the year,” said Speas. “And they’re coming in intense moments of need, potentially from people in fear and pain and looking for emergency help. And so our responders are oftentimes the first ones they see when they get there and this is why we must continually push for excellence in our emergency services.”

The year had a total of 98,041 volunteer hours, which calculated into firefighting pay rate dollars equates to $4.1 million, Speas said.

“If you were to look at this like a match contribution to the Measure Z funding, that’s representing about a 200 percent match contribution which is pretty significant. So these are volunteer hours and this is a great gift that our residents are giving to Humboldt County.”

But he added that “we should also not take that for granted and we have to recognize that we’re probably pretty much maxing out on how much we can ask people to volunteer in Humboldt County for this.”

Volunteer recruitment and retention is one of the primary challenges faced by local volunteer fire departments.

The report says a “shrinking roster of firefighters makes it difficult to maintain current levels of service,” with “ever increasing training and performance demands on volunteers” and increasing call amounts “that put volunteers in dangerous situations, threatening their physical safety and mental health.”

Those challenges are “exacerbated by the fact that significant developed and populated areas of the county are located outside the boundaries of any fire-related district.”

Speas is a member of the Humboldt County Fire Services Planning Team, which is working on expanding fire district boundaries and consolidating districts.

Ferndale Volunteer Fire Department Chief Rick Nicholson, the association’s outgoing president, showed a map designating substantive “goodwill response areas” covered by fire protection districts.

The planning effort aims to encompass those areas into districts.

“We’re working on that for Ferndale, it’s gonna be bumping up to Rio Dell, bumping up to Petrolia, and Petrolia is looking at a possible merger with Honeydew and Telegraph Ridge,” Nicholson said.

The report notes the Garberville Fire Protection District’s recent district boundary expansions to the Mendocino county line, west to “meet up” with the boundaries of the Redway and Briceland districts, east to Bell Springs Road and north to Dean Creek.

That takes in what was previously considered a goodwill area and Nicholson said efforts are ongoing “to get rid of some of those areas and annex them into the districts.”

Board Chair Michelle Bushnell said rural fire departments are “really foundations of communities,” naming the Telegraph Ridge, Alderpoint, Shelter Cove and Bridgeville departments as the “very rural” ones in her supervisorial district.

“Those departments are not only offering their services for medical and fire, but they also do community events and the community really rallies around those departments,” she said. “They’re super important to their communities.”