Tracy Pyles | Augusta County leaders making big mistake with Churchville Fire

“Soulless” came to mind first, when considering the latest action by the Augusta County Board of Supervisors. “Lacking human warmth, emotion, or spirit” pretty well captures the opening paragraph from an apparently under-informed board chairman seeking to “dissolve” the Churchville Volunteer Fire and Rescue Company.

Churchville Volunteer Fire and Rescue has been protecting friends and neighbors since 1959. Before the county was spending $17 million annually for career personnel, farmers, DuPont workers, mechanics, homemakers, retirees were manning fire trucks and ambulances for the simple satisfaction of “being there” in times of need.

In the ensuing years, through spaghetti suppers, boot drives, cake walks, summer carnivals, and sweat equity they added to the limited county contributions to buy land, build structures and secure millions of dollars of equipment.

For years volunteers were the backbone for emergency services when the county had scant resources to offer. In 1996, my first year on the BOS, the county had only 14 firefighters for approximately 54,000 residents, living on 1,000 square miles of farmland and in scattered communities.

Of course, times and needs changed. By 2018, we had increased career staffing from 14 firemen to 105 staffers trained in both fighting fires and administering emergency medical aide. Fourteen remained at our Staunton facility, while the other 91 were spread throughout the county into community stations where they were afforded the use of volunteer-built facilities and equipment: fire trucks, ambulances, jaws of life, breathing apparatus, hoses, pumps, ladders, defibrillators, oxygen.

My last year on the Board, we were advised that in a key measurement of efficacy for rescue services, Augusta County was the equal to Fairfax County in “Spontaneous Resuscitations.” Being top tier among peers in this regard is a marker of overall proficiency.

To deliver a heart attack victim in time for spontaneous recovery in a hospital, requires on scene timeliness, quality medical application, then timely care and delivery to the hospital. Augusta was “as good as it gets.”

Instead of trying to personally understand how we had become so effective, with a proven mix of widely dispersed volunteers and career staffing, they hired efficiency experts (yikes!).

The compensated conclusion was: “Consolidation.” Fewer stations, strategically located, via a “hub and spoke” template was proposed and adopted by the Board of Supervisors as how to go forward.

On paper, it was a winner. In reality, it was/is choosing dollars over lives.

Let me explain.

Consider that in Board Chair Jeff Slaven’s letter, he speaks to the possibility of relocating the Churchville station to existing county property at Buffalo Gap. Every existing station (except Riverheads) was organically planted by community needs.

Churchville’s station is located in the center of a longtime community at the very crossroads of primary roads in Western Augusta: Routes 250 and 42. Every mile it moves south to Buffalo Gap lessens its effectiveness as seen by a reduction of homes within five miles. Closer to wide pastures and further from people places.

(Please consider why the Amazon, Target and Best Buy “distribution centers” are located at the crossroads of Interstates 81 and 64. Just like Churchville, they can deliver north, south, east or west immediately from their commonsense locations.)

If the county did an analysis of residents within a five-mile circle of Churchville in comparison to a like consideration at Buffalo Gap, let’s see it. If not shame on them. Do it now.

Mr. Slaven is putting many of his own residents in a more precarious situation. Many of his residents are in Churchville’s First Due, and all are north of the proposed southbound relocation. Fire suppression and emergency medical care efficacy; has the primary success factor determined by time to scene.

And for many it is not like they are already in advantageous services proximity. It is 12 miles from Churchville to the Mount Solon station, 18 miles to Deerfield. Homes and children that were within nine and six miles are now at 14 and 11. And while this would improve the distance for some, it hurts more.

“Hub and Spoke” sound smart until it is understood that tidy solutions get messy when they face a reality of population and distances that are not uniformly spaced.

So why move?

1. A lot has been made of the recent flooding at the Churchville facility without considering the cause and solution. My property rests on Jennings Branch about a half-mile from the fire house. My banks overflow, but never before did the fire station get flooding, and I didn’t. But we have come to believe the damaging water did not come from the river but from the road.

Seems the drain in front of the firehouse was not draining. Whoops!

Two takeaways: This requires fixing, but it is not the property owner’s responsibility. Drains are public infrastructure built by and for the public. It is VDOT’s responsibility to determine the problem and fix it – on an emergency basis. So, let’s put that aside.

2. Time, personnel increases, and complementary equipment demands have rendered the station inefficient and undersized. Churchville’s First Due has substantially grown over time by area and call volume. The hospital moved further away.

The county’s first career station in Staunton lacks the ability to provide medical transport. Swoope Fire similarly does not transport. The rescue responsibilities put on Churchville are immense.

The ultimate responsibility for the provision of these services is on the county. Churchville has always done its part which has included the acceptance, inclusion, and need for county support – in all endeavors.

So, to criticize Churchville for not staying current in all ways is unfair and unhelpful. To put a gun to the volunteers head demanding the buildings, equipment, and authority or be abandoned is cruel and self-damaging.

When the county put career rescue in Craigsville, to facility the increase in 24-hour personnel, I used Pastures’ infrastructure to construct a bunk room and purchased another ambulance for them.

When Craigsville Fire wanted to purchase the entire building it was residing in, I again used infrastructure money to fund half the purchase.

The county purchased built and equipped the Riverheads F&R station while making an agreement for both volunteer authority and paid staffing.

Taking over this station is not a one-off that impacts no one else. Every volunteer will consider his or her dedication to a community good that may disappear. That their work is not just unappreciated but sneered at.

What is the cost of losing our volunteers? This year’s budget notes spending $18 million for career staff and $2 million for volunteers. Of those numbers, most of the $18 million goes to salaries, of the $2 million, very little goes into volunteer pockets, essentially just reimbursements; all the rest goes to costs associated with maintaining a fire station. Costs that will not go away with the loss of free workers, but only become additive.

So, how did we get here? If I were a less upright soul, I might describe the Board of Supervisor as said about the bar patrons in “Star Wars”: “a wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Or the Biblical condemnation of the unrepentant as a “brood of vipers.”

But that’s just not kind, so I will leave it at a group of people unprepared or unable to sort through a complex array of varying conditions and obligations to achieve a result compassionate and satisfying to those due honor and service.

And because the Board needs correction, I will offer these suggestions for consideration by the Board and volunteers:

1. Stay at the existing location.
2. Respond to volunteer requests with a sense of partnership, not worker: employee.
3. Save what is salvageable. With the existing facility, make it useful for community and volunteer needs. Improve the look outside and upgrade the inside for exercising/recreation, training, kitchen, emergency housing or simple refuge. When available, make the owned house into a bunk house. Keep the historical and community value when preserving the old for a new need.
4. Build a basic but eye-pleasing emergency services building that can house the vehicles, other work equipment, work space, and duty personnel.
5. Get community support though open meetings with preliminary costs and drawings. Incorporate what is smart and doable.

Be smart, start over.