The Associated Press
BEND, Ore.— State officials suspended 22 private firefighting crews based in Deschutes, Josephine and Jackson counties because the owners lacked the required permits to dispatch crews.
The suspensions upset business owners preparing crews from Redmond to La Pine for the height of the fire season. They predicted the move, which displaced 180 firefighters, would lead to less competition and higher government costs.
“Somebody pulled strings in the middle of the fire season,” said Rick Herson, owner of Eugene-based Oregon Woods Inc. “The loser in this deal is the taxpayers.”
The Deschutes County suspensions came in response to complaints from state Rep. Chuck Burley, R-Bend, and Deschutes County forester Joe Stutler, said Rod Nichols, a forestry department spokesman. The two notified state officials that the crews were breaking the terms of a state contract, which is used to dispatch private firefighters in Oregon and Washington.
New contract provisions added this year require firefighting companies to provide the state with proof that they hold local government permits, which allow them to dispatch firefighters. The Central Oregon-area crews that were suspended didn’t have the required permits, according to Deschutes County officials.
The new rules were adopted in part because firefighting companies were using phantom addresses to gain a business advantage, Stutler said. Proximity to a fire and hourly wage bids submitted at the beginning of each fire season by each company determine who is chosen to fight a particular fire.
“Folks were setting up in residential areas and motels simply to be dispatched out of Central Oregon,” Stutler said.
The new contract rules were partly in response to a series of fatal accidents involving firefighters driving long distances to and from fires, said Mike Wheelock, owner of Merlin-based Grayback Forestry.
Herson, who has based a crew on 10 acres he owns in La Pine for five years, said the suspension comes at the worst possible time. If the state wanted to see his permitting paperwork, it should have asked him at the beginning of the season, he said.
Because it will take him six to 10 weeks to get a Deschutes County permit, his 20-person crew has effectively been shut out of the rest of the fire season.
Burley said everybody who signed onto the contract at the beginning of the year should have known of the new permitting language.
Firefighters who work for the suspended crews are allowed to take work on other crews under the contract, state officials said.