Close to Home: Coastal fire and rescue needs help

Timber Cove is a small community of 262 registered voters spread over 48 square miles of Sonoma County’s most rugged coastline. Our heavily forested and steep terrain is known for its redwood forests and stunning scenery. Although the Timber Cove Fire Protection District is a high wildfire danger zone, we face many challenges and needs unmet by Sonoma County.

Highly valued by the thousands of tourists and locals who enjoy our campgrounds, hotels and vacation rentals, our volunteer firefighters are often called upon for rescue and medical services.

Parks makes up 48% of our territory — diminishing the taxable area the fire department serves. Nonetheless, those using these public facilities are provided services without charge, with volunteers turning out at all hours to clean up after accidents and drunken drivers as well as to rescue divers and kayakers. Our firefighters come out on stormy nights to clear Highway 1 of fallen trees so traffic can pass and to escort and ensure clear passage for ambulances.

Our fire district is struggling to make ends meet. Our once prizewinning firehouse has a leaky roof, our equipment needs updating, our medical supplies are depleted from constant demand. Any funding from Sonoma County is so minimal as to be an embarrassment if not downright scandalous.

Despite such stresses and institutional failures to support our services, our volunteers provide heroic service. During the Meyers Grade fire last year our firefighters fought valiantly around the clock for days alongside neighboring volunteer firefighters and residents who contributed their bulldozers to contain a fire that was perilously close to sweeping across western Sonoma County to Guerneville.

Why don’t we receive a fair share of the transient occupancy tax collected in our district? Although approximately 43% of the tax comes from mostly unincorporated west county areas like the coast, Sonoma County distributes the proceeds to mostly urban constituents and for economic development and tourism. Why does the Timber Cove fire district get virtually no return when our needs are so significant? Why, when we try to consolidate with other nearby fire districts for more effective service delivery, are we expected to find funding for their firehouse repairs, equipment and medical supplies? Why has the meager yet important $25-a-call stipend once paid to each volunteer not been renewed by Sonoma County when it barely pays for gas?

Confronting these challenges, the voters of district dug deep and passed a parcel tax of $185. Selfless, yes, but it provides only a small fraction of the fire department’s needs.

We may surmise that it is small population and our absence of voter clout that sustains such marginalization. Sure, on the surface that may be what politically minded supervisors consider important. Yet those same supervisors mouth platitudes about preserving the Sonoma Coast come each election. The real test is their capacity to recognize that the safety and well-being of that same rugged, beautiful coast is in the hands of a fire district that is grossly underfunded and ignored.

It is high time to end this neglect and for concerned citizens who value what we do to come forward in solidarity with our needs. We need widespread recognition of the invaluable services that the Timber Cove Fire Protection District performs and its need to upgrade and sustain those services for all who value the northern Sonoma Coast.

Peter Schmidt is an emeritus professor at the University of Florida. Ron Case is president of the Timber Cove Homes Association.

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.