Districts may join for Advanced Life Support program

Published 1:30 am Saturday, April 18, 2026

QUILCENE — Fire departments in south Jefferson County are discussing a cooperative Advanced Life Support program and may ask voters for a levy lid lift to pay for it.

South county is home to Brinnon Fire Department (BFD), Quilcene Fire Department (QFD) and Discovery Bay Volunteer Fire and Rescue (DBFR).

“The board of fire commissioners from all three districts have said, ‘To add Advanced Life Support to the south end is the right thing to do,’” QFD Fire Chief Tim McKern said. “Now we just need to make sure that each agency can afford it.”

“It would be a big advantage for Brinnon, Quilcene and Discovery Bay,” DBFR Fire Chief Willie Knoepfle said.

If determined to be affordable, a program could begin sometime in 2027, McKern said.

Currently, south county relies on partnerships with East Jefferson Fire Rescue (EJFR) when emergency calls warrant the higher level of service, but with growing call numbers, the sole county program is expected to be increasingly strained.

“East Jefferson is getting busier every day,” Knoepfle said. “When we use them in our mutual aid program, it takes a medic away from East Jefferson, depending on if it’s a transport or just an evaluation.”

“We did over 605 calls (last year); Brinnon did over 647 calls,” McKern said. “I’ve been here six years, and that’s the highest we’ve ever had. We’ve never done more than 500 calls a year. The need is there.”

Early conversations on the feasibility of financing such a program have taken place at recent fire commission meetings.

“The participating agencies are still working through important issues including governance, cost, structure, sustainability, and long-term feasibility,” BFD Fire Chief Tim Manly wrote.

McKern said the program, which would be based centrally in Quilcene, likely would employ three paramedics. The paramedics would work on A, B and C crews, collectively covering the south county area 24/7.

“We’re going to go with a competitive salary for the area,” McKern said.

Estimated wages were discussed as much as $150,000 per position annually during the Quilcene Board of Commissioners meeting.

DBFR, the smallest department in the county, would love to see the program succeed. But lots of questions remain, not the least of which is financing, Knoepfle said.

“There’s no extra money in our department,” Knoepfle said. “We barely have enough to get by. It would be very challenging for us to make it work. We’re gonna try.”

Paying for the Advanced Life Support (ALS) program likely would require a levy lid lift. The ballot materials would need to be submitted by the end of April to make it on to the August ballot. The agencies may wait for November if the earlier timeline proves to be too tight.

“I’m kind of in favor of doing a levy lift, whether it’s six years and whether it’s $1.25 or $1.50,” QFD Commissioner Marcia Kelbon said during an April meeting.

McKern said QFD likely would make its intentions more public in the near future.

ALS requires about 2,000 hours of training compared to the roughly 200 hours required for Basic Life Support (BLS), McKern said. ALS responders are commonly referred to as paramedics, while BLS responders are EMTs.

“Really the differences between an EMT and a paramedic is just powers and scope of practice,” McKern said.

It’s a big jump up, Knoepfle said.

“They can do a lot more advanced airway, they can do a lot more cardiac evaluations, they can give a lot more drugs,” Knoepfle said.

When people call 911, McKern said, the emergency operator asks questions to discern the type and level of emergency. That process is the first step in assigning what level of responder should go out on the call.

Even if the agencies decide to move forward with the program, they may encounter some difficulty in finding paramedics interested in working in the area, McKern said.

“Right now there’s a shortage of paramedics,” he said. “It’s very hard to find paramedics and to say, ‘Do you want to come to Quilcene, where you’re only going to get one or two calls a week?”

The agencies also would need to meet legal standards before they could operate an ALS program, McKern said.

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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.