In an email sent to county commissioners and forwarded to Our Town Reno, Charles Moore, the fire chief for Truckee Meadows Fire and Rescue had some strong words opposing possible plans for a new "regional fire scheme," calling it a "recipe for failure" and "half-baked". He also felt what he said was misconstrued in a recent RGJ article titled LA Fires: Could it Happen Here?
The Truckee Meadows Fire and Rescue serves unincorporated areas of Washoe County, Nevada, while both Reno and Sparks have their own fire departments. Last year, the city of Reno and the Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority agreed to merge their fire departments.
Here is what Chief Moore wrote in his email to county commissioners dated from a few days ago:
"I have viewed news accounts quoting the City of Reno about a meeting planned for February 6 to discuss a regional fire scheme. I do not know anything about it, nor have my staff or I been contacted. I am not taking any action on it.
It is my belief that the City will use the LA Fires to drive discussions and over-emotionalize the tragedy there so it can drive conversations about creating a single fire agency. The analysis suggests a significant tax increase would be needed because the City of Reno wants to divest itself of its expensive fire department and open up more financial capacity with its budget. A strategy of “let’s regionalize and figure out the details later” is a recipe for failure.
I would urge you to consider the political fallout should you support a half-baked idea to regionalize without a comprehensive study and full knowledge of the tax, cost, and service-level implications. Since any scheme would require a consistent tax rate across jurisdictions, taxes in TMFR would need to increase. You would likely lose any ability to make future service-level decisions for your constituents. Even if you want to consider a tax increase, why would you not apply an increase to TMFR needs, such as full-time fire stations in Silver Knolls, Washoe Valley, and possibly Palomino Valley?
If the city is tight on revenues, I would ask them why they gave their firefighters a 9% increase in salary.
I’m not very happy with the RGJ story about whether a fire of that magnitude could happen here. I told the reporter that it could but that it was unlikely we would lose thousands of structures. I would have been happier with the story had they gone further with my quote.
We continue to record successes in live-saving interventions through the mutual aid scheme that was put in place. A recent call involving a two-vehicle crash resulted in a Reno and TM response. TM firefighters disentangled two victims in one car, while Reno suppressed a fire in the second fully involved vehicle.
Item 2: Our brush engines are returning from Los Angeles and should be back shortly. Officials there are now requesting deployment of the region's Haz-Mat Team (Triad), which consists of resources from TMFR, Sparks, and Reno. We are assessing the request, including cost reimbursement and the effect on our current level of service."