Clark County Fire District 6 won the coveted Washington Fire Commissioners Association (WFCA) Management Excellence Award in October.
Fire Chief Kristan Maurer said the WFCA evaluates a multitude of factors like staffing, how many stations the district has, the call volume, and their public outreach programs when considering an awardee. In other words, they look at the department as a whole and see if the district is providing the best service it possibly can to the taxpayers, Maurer said.
“We feel honored,” Maurer said. “It’s an award that goes up against fire districts of our size across the whole state, and we compete in category A, which is a district with a budget of over $4 million. So we feel really honored that they liked what we were doing and how we were managing the department.”
Maurer said winning the honor wasn’t easy. She became the chief on Jan. 1, 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic started taking hold in Clark County in March.
“Nobody had the manual on how to handle this pandemic,” Maurer said. “So we really went through 2020 figuring out what to do, especially with government mandates and such. It wasn’t anything we prepared for, but like the fire service does in general, we work through it. We make it happen and we keep responding.”
District 6 also had to work through staffing changes as two long-term chiefs retired and changes to the administrative staff occurred. The firefighters on the ground stayed in the department. Maurer said as soon as Clark County had its first COVID-19 case, the team quickly pivoted and got everything they needed as far as personal protective equipment, social distancing, and masking.
“We were really fortunate in the year of 2020 that we didn’t have any firefighters who were exposed to COVID,” she said.
In addition to the firefighters the district already had, Maurer said they added 11 lateral firefighters and paramedics, meaning they already had personal firefighting experience. The district also expanded by opening Station 63 in March of last year, which is in Salmon Creek.
With that station, the district opened its first training facility, a four-story training tower that is capable of live fire-burning. That building is what used to be the old station on 134th Avenue in Salmon Creek, with the current station being located on 1119 N.E. 136th St.
Maurer said it allows them to train new recruits in house rather than sending them out of town. The smoke produced in the building is the same type used on rides at Disneyland, according to Maurer, which is non-toxic to the firefighters and to the citizens outside of the building, as well as the environment itself.
Although the management excellence award focuses heavily on administration and how the district upholds policies and responds to the community, Maurer said the district couldn’t have gotten the distinction without the firefighters in the field.
“None of that could have happened without the line personnel that we have,” Maurer said. “They really are the boots on the ground that are going out there and providing that excellent service District 6 is known for. Although it’s called the management excellence award, it’s not just that. It’s the District 6 award, our department award, as well as our community’s award.”
