Mayor: some stepping up to restart fire department

The town of Coulee Dam doesn’t have a functional fire department currently, relying heavily on mutual aid agreements with other local departments.

Mayor Bob Poch said Wednesday that several people are interested in stepping up to fill that void, and talks are ongoing with other towns’ more experienced firefighters to offer training.

“We have some people that have stepped up and started to volunteer again,” Poch told the city council, and six or eight younger people in town are willing to join the volunteer fire department.

“It’s a slower process than we’d all like, but it’s happening,” Poch said.

Meanwhile Ryan Fish, assistant fire chief in Grand Coulee, reported that he and Fire Chief Rick Paris are working on drafting an agreement between the two cities that would allow one of Grand Coulee’s ambulances to be parked at the Coulee Dam fire station. They hope to have that done by July 1.

Grand Coulee has three ambulances, all parked in Grand Coulee, but several of their ambulance personnel live in Coulee Dam.

Parking an ambulance in Coulee Dam would allow those EMTs quicker access to help Coulee Dam patients.

“There have been a lot of times it would’ve been nice to have one down here,” he told the council.

Currently, those ambulance personnel would have to go up to Grand Coulee to get an ambulance to respond to a call in Coulee Dam.

The vehicle that Coulee Dam owns is no longer certified as an ambulance and the city itself has no certification for an ambulance service, Fish said.