I am writing this commentary to urge Lewis County Fire District 10 voters to approve the levy increase for the Packwood Fire Department (PFD) on their Aug. 6 primary ballot.
In preparation for this writing, I talked with people in the fire department, but also solicited personal accounts from people in the community via our Facebook community group. I received many heartfelt accounts and stories from people where the PFD had been there in their critical time of need. I received others relating to ways in which the department had helped other organizations and people.
Nearly everyone in the district has been served by the department and its people in either emergency situations or community involvement. I truly wish I could publish all these responses praising the department and its people.
What I have learned is that Chief Lonnie Goble and most PFD volunteers and families have lived in Packwood all their lives or moved here in their early working years to work for the Forest Service or other employers. Packwood was a tight knit community then and they are a very tight knit community within the department.
I received a story by Charity Johnson, daughter of Lonnie Goble and his wife, Vivian, chronicling her experience as a family member and seeing the dedication and sacrifice of the long-term Packwood volunteers. In one small snippet from Charity’s story she relates, “There were several times throughout our childhood when emergency calls would come in the middle of the night and, with no other options, we would be packed up in the truck or car and be driven to the incident to sleep in the car while my parents were fighting a house fire, or at a scene of a horrific accident. It is something that just became normal and understood. It was always an important factor that helping people is what we did."
During the 1950s through the 1980s, Packwood was a thriving timber town surrounded by the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The village had a commercial district with a variety of stores, businesses, restaurants and bars like many small villages in the United States in the era. There was a post office and a public school. The U.S. Forest Service had a station here and later had an engineering office. There were two mills in town. The mills, forest service and logging provided family wage jobs and there were multi-generational families, some descended from the original homesteaders. Homes were cheap and barriers to homeownership low. In those years, Packwood residents had some of the best of what small town life in the U.S. had to offer.
In the early 1990s, this way of life came tumbling down with the crash in the timber industry. The Forest Service closed its station and office, losing 300 Packwood jobs. The last mill closed. Packwood’s full-time resident population decreased from 1,500 to 600.
Families left town in search of employment elsewhere. The school closed. Packwood had hosted baseball tournaments but there were not enough people left to field and support a baseball team, leaving Packwood with a newly built, unused baseball park. The town was in a serious economic depression.
The era of the isolated timber town is long closed for Packwood. Many of the people who remained after the logging bust are now gone. Packwood has been “discovered” by a new generation of outsiders and is booming again but with a much-changed culture and economy based primarily around tourism and recreation.
The Packwood Fire Department remains a pillar of the community with its primary mission being rapid response to fire and medical emergencies, but also serving the community in many other ways.
The primary challenge the department faces is personnel attrition. Chief Goble and the volunteers are mostly well past retirement age. They will be losing eight of their most experienced personnel over the next two years and be left with only two qualified volunteer EMTs to cover medical emergency calls.
The era of the all-volunteer EMS team, which can provide only basic life support while transporting the patient to the nearest emergency room, is coming to a close. Looking forward, Chief Goble, the fire commissioners and the volunteers recognize the critical need to staff their EMS team with full time professional paramedics, trained and equipped to provide advanced life support care.
The department intends to contract for 24/7 professional paramedic availability from the Packwood Fire Station. These paramedics, responding with advanced life support training, equipment and medications, and teamed with EMS volunteers, will improve patient outcomes and save lives. Packwood’s distance from emergency medical facilities makes this advanced level of first responder care during the critical “golden hour,” when every minute counts, even more crucial. The paramedic will also provide training to the team members and do service work in the community.
The department has never asked the taxpayers for a levy increase. They’ve carefully budgeted and purchased their vehicles and equipment with grants or low interest loans. They built a new station in 1999 and paid for it over 15 years from their existing budget without asking taxpayers to fund a bond.
The Packwood Fire Department needs to implement a way forward, and the community needs this emergency services safety net. It’s imperative Lewis County District 10 voters approve this ballot measure. Please cast your ballot in the Aug. 6 primary election.
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Bill Serrahn, who lives in Packwood, has written several climate-focused commentaries for The Chronicle. They can be found at chronline.com.
