Staff Change At Sammamish Firehouse Long In The Works, Chief Says

SAMMAMISH, WA - The Eastside Fire station near Pine Lake in Sammamish recently had its hours reduced and a fire engine removed, but Chief Jeff Clark says the department is using a new deployment strategy to improve service, not reducing services.

Complicating the change, there was a "communication breakdown" between city officials and the fire department. So, residents living near Station 81 were not personally notified of the change.

The changes at Station 81 began in 2016 years ago when the fire department started working on a new strategic plan. As part of that, the department reevaluated how it responds to incidents in urban areas - for example, the Pine Lake area as opposed to a more rural part of Eastside Fire's coverage area like North Bend.

At Station 81, firefighters were responding to incidents in what Clark called a "cross-staffing" model.

"When an EMS call is received, the firefighters respond on an ambulance, and when a fire call comes in they respond on a fire engine," Clark described.

Getting rid of cross-staffing allows the department to assign firefighters to either an ambulance or a fire engine permanently. The result is a saving of about $1.5 million for the department, but also moving resources to where calls for service are highest.

During peak hours between 8:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., a fully staffed rescue aid unit will be available at Station 81. There are still two other fire stations in Sammamish in the Sahalee and Klahanie areas. The latter, Station 83, is about two miles from Station 81.

"While one of the mandates we operate under is to deliver the service as cost efficiently as possible, and the decision by the board to implement the change did represent a cost avoidance of $1.5 million, the primary driver of the change was an improved deployment model," Clark said.

Eastside Fire did hold a public meeting on the change on Jan. 24, but Sammamish Comment reported that it was lightly attended.