Fire 17 disputes lack of district coverage

Matt Baide | Jan 19, 20230

Editor’s Note: Fire 17 responded to a story in last week’s edition with a letter to the editor that can be found on page 5 of this week's PDF (above).

Mason County Fire District 17 disputes a claim that the district cannot respond to calls.

According to Jenni Glasco, a resident of Mason County Fire District 17 who works at Brinnon Fire, the point of concern was forgotten by Fire 17 in an email response to last week’s Journal story about the dispute between the two districts.

“I started this with a post because I am a citizen of Mason County Fire District 17 about the change in dispatch,” Glasco wrote in an email. “People in the north end of Fire District 17 have to wait for an ambulance from Lake Limerick. That’s 40 to 45 minutes, if they are available. That’s a scary amount of time if you’re in an urgent medical situation. Instead, it has become a bash fest and we still are waiting. There’s no dispute Central Mason is responding for our ambulance. You have to have an ambulance to do most necessary things. If you look at call times for Mason 17 you will see.”

Glasco posted her concerns in the Mason County News and Events group on Facebook, stating her concerns about Fire 17 asking Brinnon Fire to stop responding to mutual aid calls. In response to last week’s article, Glasco said Brinnon Fire has nine women and an all-female fire academy going and the problem isn’t with women.

“It’s the response times. It’s about safety and conflicts of interest and isn’t personal, which it has been made,” Glasco wrote. “We had an ambulance that could respond in 10 to 15 minutes and because of personal issues, it was canceled. This shows a lack of concern for the community. The fact that they want to turn this into bashing is disgusting. This is not about them and their feelings. It’s about their community they serve.”

Glasco spoke with the Journal by phone Tuesday. Originally from Snohomish County, Glasco has been a certified Emergency Management Technician for three years and lives at Beacon Point. She said contrary to what Fire 17 is saying, not everyone is satisfied with the level of service.

“My neighborhood is in a state of panic now, a lot of them knowing they could die waiting for an ambulance,” Glasco said. “They’ve asked me, what do we do? Can we request a different district to come faster? We can’t because they’ve been told not to come and we have the service and now we don’t, which is what is frustrating. It’s available.”

She said speaking as a resident of Fire 17’s district, she believes the dispute has become personal as opposed to being about the needs of the community. She was surprised by the response she got from her original post.

“They’re not addressing the issue. They’re throwing feelings into it,” Glasco said. “I don’t care at all. If I were laying dying, that somebody was mean to them, and I’m air quoting that as I’m saying that. That doesn’t matter. Having a low tax rate doesn’t matter if you’re dying. None of that matters if something serious is happening. And saying that our tax has been low since 1972, well, our population has grown since then. Things have changed, we need that coverage. We have a

mostly senior citizen population, quite old population and that comes with health risks and the need for ambulance service, falls, fractured hips, things like that. We definitely need ambulance coverage.”

During the Jan. 9 interview, Fire 17 Commissioner Pat O’Brien responded to Glasco’s concerns and questioned why she lives in Mason County but works at Brinnon Fire.

“Jenni Glasco is an EMT, God bless her. Anybody who’s willing to sacrifice themselves to protect people, but she moved into Mason County at Beacon Point, which is our area, and she joined Brinnon. Now I find that fascinating that she now is complaining that we don’t have enough coverage when she lives in our community and she’s not willing to work with us. What? Maybe there’s more to that,” O’Brien said.

Glasco said she works at Brinnon Fire because she needed to recertify as an EMT after moving to Beacon Point and Brinnon Fire Chief Tim Manly teaches an EMT course. Glasco said she talked to them and wanted a more professional environment and the opportunity to go through fire and advanced training, and all of that was available at Brinnon Fire.

The talk of the merger began when Manly came to visit Fire 17 commissioner Gary Janisch, according to Janisch. Janisch has been with Fire 17 since 1982, 21 years as a firefighter and 25 years as a commissioner.

“It all started when he came up to my shop and we talked about it and I said, well, we have a meeting Tuesday night, such and such a date, you’re welcome to come and you can tell us what you’re going to do for us, and they did,” Janisch said. “They came down, laid it all out and everything and we told them at that time, we’ll consider. Then they invited us to their meeting, so we went up to their meeting and actually, we told them the same thing, we’re going to take it back and talk it over and we’ll let you know what we’re going to do and that’s what we did.”

When they brought the idea to their constiuents, O’Brien said they did not want to merge with Brinnon Fire.

Commissioner Joel Carlson said during the Jan. 9 interview with the Journal that he doesn’t know what has changed to cause problems with Brinnon Fire.

“Cooperation with Jefferson over the last quite a few years has been fine,” Carlson said. “No problems, until we turned down the merge. Once we did that, we’re getting letters. All sorts of stuff going on that we don’t quite understand why because nothing’s changed. There’s a reason behind it somewhere and we’d sure like to find out why.”

Glasco said she hopes the two districts will merge.

“I know that they think it’s a conflict of interest but I live there, I take care of my elderly mother-in-law. I have a child,” Glasco said. “I don’t feel safe. I’m very concerned.”

Fire 17 Captain Sunflower Miles said during the Jan. 9 interview that the solution to this is to keep the status quo, having Brinnon respond to calls when needed and that Fire 17 does not want to merge with them or any other fire district at this time.

“We still need help at certain things and we would still like for them to respond for certain things,” Miles said. “They just don’t have to come every single call.”