Opinion Piece By Samuel Strait – January 20, 2023 For three decades Del Norte Ambulance (DNA) has been in service to this County as a first responder to all of the County's health care emergencies. During that entire run of thirty plus years there have been several ambulance companies who have entered into the bidding to supplant DNA, but it has always come down to DNA to have provided more than adequate service to this community during each contractual period and to be selected to continue to provide that service to the County's unfortunates. It; therefore, was somewhat of a surprise when three of the County's five Supervisors elected to ignore the advice of the contracted over sight entity, North Coast Emergency Services, and pursue the least effective and most expensive alternative path to continue ambulance service to the County with very little likelihood of any change in ambulance service. While most in the community will have little clear knowledge of why this has occurred, this story will expose several components that make up that decision. The story begins with the fact that we no longer live in times where candles, kerosene lamps, open flames, and fireplaces dominate most households and businesses. Coupled with improved building materials, building codes, and building inspections, fires no longer dominate the calls that most fire houses attend when the tonal sounds. With that change in circumstance fire houses nation wide have began to look for other means of making the investment in the local fire house appear relevant, as such, rescues and health emergencies have become the dominant mechanism for the fire house to remain important in their respective communities. This has become particularly so in the nation's volunteer fire departments in small rural communities. Here locally our fire fighters respond to but a few structure fires each year. Local Dispatch recorded only a dozen structure fire calls during 2022, yet the Crescent Fire Protection District claims to have been called out over two thousand times during that same year, most of which were health related emergencies, not fires. While most folks in the community are filled with the visions of an adrenaline filled surge of the heroic fire fighter rescuing the baby from the burning building, reality has come in the form of most health related emergencies in modern America are best served by the trained professionals of an ambulance company. Firemen for the most part are relegated to being often unnecessary or likely should have remained in the fire house unless the ambulance service requested their attendance. Kind of like being relegated to being second class citizens in the emergency services realm of first responders. For years, because of this new dynamic, ambulance services have been considered the usurpers by the fire services who wish to remain relevant with little success while most in their respective communities continue to believe that their fire house contains the local heroes essential to the role of first responders. Our local fire fighters are no different and are reluctant to make the changes within their current future visions that could restore some of that lost luster. The recent vote by three members of the BOS will not make much of a change in the results of who will serve Del Norte County in the future, but will make the future of ambulance service more costly by adding another layer of cost and bureaucracy to the process for NO benefit to the Community. The fire department will continue with its pointless squabble over who gets to the site of the accident first and complain about quality of service provided any ambulance service going forward because they lack the ability to provide professional medical assistance at the site of an accident and the inability to properly transport anyone to a hospital. This has been for years and continues to be a problem that has resulted in a flawed Ad Hoc committee report to the BOS and a bias exposed by the fact that Del Norte Ambulance was given little opportunity to respond to the anecdotal reporting given to a member of the fire department, Darren Short, and our "government has the answer for everything" Valerie Starkey hardly a neutral Ad Hoc committee. This failure was continued by a recent addition to the BOS, Joey Borges, who also has ties to the fire department and made little effort to include Del Norte Ambulance in his foray into the responsibility of being a neutral party when evaluating a service vital to this community. As to vested interest one only has to look as to who has been selected to be recipients of Crescent Fire and Rescue's venture into a hybrid fire department, some paid, most not. While I am sure this will no doubt be distasteful for those that continue to believe in the importance of the fire department, times have changed, and many in the fire department/first responder realm have made changes in personnel and equipment that reflect that change. Our local fire departments have not turned the page to this new reality. Hiring fire captains at Crescent Fire and Rescue is a clear sign that they continue to believe their role is primarily directed at fighting fires rather than attending to health related emergencies. Responding to health related calls only when requested by the ambulance service, hiring paramedics rather than fire captains, and focusing on Rapid Response Vehicles rather fire tenders would be of more benefit than continuing the decades long feud with the ambulance service and would be a step in the right direction, which includes the benefit of remaining a useful tool in the emergency services tool box. The pandering to the fire service by the three members of the BOS has not been that benefit to the community and will likely allow the fire department to continue along the path of marginal importance all the while continuing their myth of an essential service when responding to health related emergencies. The conflict of the fire department and an ambulance service is unlikely to end even if in the unlikely event that another service manages to be successful in the bidding process. The new service will simply exchange becoming the target for the fire service. The fact that the Ad Hoc reporting done by the committee was solely focused on anecdotal information provided by the local fire departments without much in the way of the same reporting by any other first responder, the local hospital, the school district, or many of the local public should have given pause to that committee. Similarly the former sheriff, current supervisor district five, Supervisor Wilson clearly had a differing opinion about the rush to judgement offered by Supervisors Short, Starkey, and Borges. As the former Sheriff of Del Norte County for a dozen years and intimately familiar with the nature of first responders and their cooperation difficulties, it should have paid dividends for the three to listen rather than make this perplexing decision. The final call to reason should have included more than paying lip service to the advice by North Coast Emergency Services, whose director patiently explained to the Board that it was their recommendation that Del Norte Ambulance Service should be a recipient of an Exclusive Operating Area (EOA) as had other Counties, Trinity and Humboldt, because the accountability would be much greater and the ability to terminate such an agreement would be much easier to accomplish. Not so for Supervisors Starkey, Short, and Borges.