"Smoke gets in your eyes"

Jeromy Phinney, Chief of Columbia County Fire District 3, is a good man to have a conversation with right now. He's cool as a cucumber, with a large framed photo of John Wayne on the wall beside his desk. He has the confidence you want in a fire chief while wildfires rage around the Pacific Northwest.

"Everything's dry, and dry conditions happen every year. It's nothing new," he said. "But yeah, this summer has been tough."

Twenty-one years ago, Jeromy Phinney was a kid fresh out of college. He'd come back home to Dayton to live and work. He'd never given a day's thought to fighting fires. Then one day, a friend's father called him and said they were going to a firefighter's meeting.

"He was trying to recruit younger guys to help out. So, yeah, at first, I showed up just because he was twisting my arm. But then I realized, boy, they do need help."

So Jeromy jumped in to help for 17 years as a volunteer and eventually serving as Assistant Chief. In March 2015, he went to work full time for the district. Two years later, he was appointed to the top administrative position, to replace retired Chief Rick Turner.

"There's always a shortage of volunteers," said Phinney. "We can always use more. We run 90% of what we do with volunteers."

Fire District 3 covers some 280 square miles in Columbia County, but the district's location on East Patit Road just outside Dayton is the only ambulance service for the county's entire 800 square miles. That requires paid staff. Currently, there are seven full-time staff at District 3; all of them certified EMT's. Phinney reports that now, there are 35 volunteers serving with the district.

Despite Phinney's calm demeanor, he is fully aware of the unique conditions that have resulted in the amount of fire activity this season.

"It's not uncommon to have big fires," he said. "But It's horrible for the communities that got hit. With the dry conditions, lightning strikes in certain places at certain times, and the winds howling out of the north at 40-50 mph, they had everything going against them."

This year, according to Phinney, District 3 has made an extra effort to be available for what he calls "state mobilization." These are calls that come into the district from the Blue Mountain Interagency Dispatch Center, located in LaGrande, Oregon, with requests to assist crews in other Washington State counties.

"We keep a truck available at all times just for this purpose," he said. "Just as other districts have done for us here over the years," Phinney says District 3 hired a part-time employee for the summer specifically to help with state mobilization calls.

"Prime Crews" and "Backup Crews" are scheduled weeks ahead of time. District 3 mobilization crews have responded to the Colfax Complex Fire and the Babb-Malden/Manning Fires, south of Spokane, which ravaged the small community of Malden. As of this writing, a crew was scheduled to return home any day, first serving at the Evans Canyon Fire (northwest of Yakima) and, most recently, the Pearl Hill Fire in the area of Bridgeport, Washington. Phinney reminds us that when a crew goes out, they're camping for the duration. "They're out in the field the entire time, sleeping in tents. If they're lucky, they took an air mattress." Crews are supplied with MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat) every time they go out. Phinney says 14 days is the typical length of a mobilization call, with that being extended only occasionally to 21 days. "After two weeks, they're tired, they need rest," he said.

Chief Phinney's current concern is the poor air quality, and not just for health reasons. "With so much smoke in the air, if there's a fire just over the hill, you can't see it, so there's no one to call it in," he said.

Which should tell us that, in one way or another, we're all firefighters.