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Four of Vashon fire department’s volunteers, including the volunteer coordinator, have left recently, drawing concern from some about the state of the volunteer program, but department management says the program is the strongest it has been in years.

Vashon Island Fire & Rescue (VIFR) responded to 1,603 calls for service in 2015, a record, according to VIFR Chief Hank Lipe. While the call volume increases every year, the department has struggled to maintain a roster of reliable and qualified volunteers who are on-island to respond as needed. While recently departed volunteer coordinator Ross Copland made strides in recruitment, more than half of the department’s volunteers still live off-island. VIFR Assistant Chief George Brown said the department currently has 44 volunteers, 20 of whom live on Vashon.

The total number also includes 11 “resident volunteers,” those who may or may not live on the island, but serve a minimum of one 24-hour shift every week. During such shifts, the volunteers stay in department housing.

“This year, the resident volunteers really took off,” Brown said last week. “That speaks a lot to Ross’ efforts with reinvigorating the program.”

Brown also said that 30 people were interviewed this week for volunteer positions; and a maximum of 10 of them will be put into the volunteer training program and be ready to respond to calls in six months to one year. The department has also begun a search for a new volunteer coordinator after losing Copland and another volunteer to firefighting jobs in Texas.

Copland was one of six firefighter or emergency medical technician (EMT) volunteers who both live and work on the island. While the department has 20 volunteers who live on Vashon, once volunteers who work off-island are taken into consideration, 16 remain. Without Copland, five of those 16 are firefighters or EMTs; the rest are support volunteers who can drive the department’s vehicles, but cannot respond in any other capacity.

And that number, the five volunteers who can respond to fire or emergency medical situations during the workweek, is what has some concerned. Brown acknowledged the problem last week, saying that in the middle of workday when volunteers are at their day jobs, it’s “a roll of the dice” if there will be enough responders to take on the call. The department is staffed to respond to as many as two and half calls at a time before volunteers need to come in. If multiple medical transport calls come in consecutively, responders could be off the island for as long as three hours. In 2015, the department responded to 1,217 emergency medical service calls; 767 of those required off-island transport.

Last week, at the same time Copland and another volunteer left, 12-year EMT volunteer Brigitte Schran Brown lost her volunteer status upon joining the VIFR Board of Commissioners. While state law allows volunteers to serve as commissioners, doing so requires a unanimous vote of the board. Moreover, the precedent at VIFR is that if volunteers become commissioners, they need to give up their volunteer role.

Brigitte Schran Brown is a registered nurse and EMT who re-joined the department’s volunteer force in 2011 after a stint of time off and received the department’s emergency medicine award in 2014. She was elected to the VIFR board in November, winning the vote for Commissioner Position 3 with 80 percent of the island votes. She replaced Commissioner Rex Stratton, who did not run again. At the Jan. 12 meeting, the first of the year for the board, the newly elected commissioner expressed her concerns for the safety of the island as she petitioned to continue volunteering while on the board.

“We’re hurting so bad,” Brigitte Schran Brown said. “I’m very distressed Ross is leaving. It’s a huge loss for the department. I don’t know where we’re going to find someone so qualified who’s also a firefighter and EMT.”

She asked the board last Tuesday to allow her to continue volunteering on a contingency basis until a conflict of interest arose or more volunteers were secured. She cited a volunteer shortage at the department and the island’s vulnerability as reasons she should stay. She acknowledged the possibility for a conflict of interest, but said she had talked to all of the department’s career firefighters and heard no protest to her continuing as a volunteer.

“As a commissioner, I’m the chief’s boss, but as a volunteer, he’s my boss. I know that. I think I can separate that, and I know that there is a chain of command,” she said. “As a volunteer, I am the lowest on the rung. If I ever abuse my power as a commissioner, I should be fired on the spot.”

Her petition was turned down by a divided board. Two volunteers in the audience and one commissioner voiced support of the continuation of her volunteer status, but two commissioners and Lipe expressed their concern about the possibility for conflicts of interest arising.

Commissioner Camille Staczek voiced her support to give Brigitte Brown a chance and said that if every department EMT was on a call and she was the only volunteer on the island who could respond, politics would be the last thing on anyone’s mind.

“It’s doing the community a disservice to say, ‘Well, she’s a commissioner, so she can’t go,'” Staczek said. “It would be on a contingency basis. Why not try it?”

VIFR volunteer Charlie Krimmert also said that “a call is a call” and that there are no politics involved when dealing with a patient. VIFR firefighter/EMT Ben Davidson said that Brigitte Schran Brown has the experience to count as 20 volunteers and is a huge resource.

“To give that up without a chance is a real shame,” Davidson said.

Meanwhile, Commissioner David Hoffman acknowledged that she would be a huge loss, but the situation would also open up potential for conflict. Commissioner Ron Turner also said that he believed allowing her to continue volunteering would create a conflict of interest.

“If a commissioner is at the scene, it prevents the chief from doing his job,” Turner said. “You (Brigitte) made a conscious decision to be on the board, and the two things have to be separate.”

The conversation was rounded out by Lipe, who noted that chiefs typically are not on the scene, but said that as the number of volunteers, or former volunteers, on the board grows, he would “question the impartiality of the board.” He said that the commissioners need to be working to fix the volunteer problem at its roots.

“I was told at the age of 17 that if you have to rely on one person, you have big problems,” Lipe said. “The chief should not go on aid calls, and one volunteer shouldn’t run the chief’s office. The fundamental philosophy I’ve tried to keep is to keep this department from being compacted; compacting it makes it weaker. I know how thin it gets here, but that’s a systems problem, not an individual problem. I need five commissioners working to fix that problem so (people) never wait.”

The department’s 2016 budget allocates $60,000 more to the volunteer program than in 2015, and George Brown said last week that the department is holding its own, but is not where he would like to be in terms of volunteers. Going forward, he said the department has to make a “fundamental decision” and talk to the public about the service they want.

“We are limited in depth,” Chief Brown said, adding, “The fundamental decision is finding out what level of service the community wants, how deep we need to staff and then what systematic and financial changes will make that possible.”

VIFR created a Strategic Planning and Oversight Team in early 2015 to discuss and craft a strategic plan to guide the department. The team will ultimately determine whether the department will seek more tax revenue to increase operations and keep up with demand. However, the completion of the process is dependent on the Medic One transition of the department’s paramedics, which is expected to occur in 2017.

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