Mount Charleston to fall into county’s firefighting jurisdiction

The Clark County Fire Department responds to more than 120,000 calls every year across a jurisdiction roughly the size of New Jersey.

The department is about to get busier.

In two years, county firefighters are set to take on all car accidents, structure fires, recreational accidents, medical calls, hazardous materials incidents and search-and-rescue calls reported on Mount Charleston.

The Nevada Division of Forestry staffs one full-time and one seasonal station on Mount Charleston, the only agency to provide round-the-clock emergency services to the mountain’s nearly 400 year-round residents and more than 2 million annual visitors.

The state agency’s upcoming shift away from that role, part of state budget cuts , saw resistance from county agencies, prompting state forestry officials to extend a 2012 deadline until June 30, 2015, to hand over coverage of Clark, Elko and Eureka counties .

The state has already handed over responsibility for so-called “all-risk” fire services to officials in White Pine, Washoe, Douglas and Storey counties.

Nevada Division of Forestry spokeswoman JoAnn Kittrell expects that the move will help signal a renewed statewide focus on wildfire protection.

“It’s not so much a budget cut as a realignment or a restructuring,” Kittrell said. “It’s moving a lot of NDF divisions away from all-risk services and toward wildfire protection.”

Nevada state forester Pete Anderson agreed that the move will help bolster the agency’s focus on its “traditional mission” of wildland firefighting.

He expects that a county takeover of Mount Charleston coverage will come free to residents and state taxpayers.

“The (Mount Charleston) Fire Station isn’t going anywhere, and historically, the county has funded fire districts, anyway,” Anderson said. “We’ve been talking about it for years. It’s an ongoing process that’s been well-vetted and well-planned . Now it’s just moving forward.”

That’s cold comfort to longtime resident Becky Grismanauskus.

She wonders why the state insists on going through with the realignment.

“Who do they think they are, anyway?” the Mount Charleston town advisory board member asked. “There really was no need for this to happen.

“I’m still concerned — you couldn’t ask for a better group of guys than the NDF guys — but the county’s got some good people, and I really feel confident they’re not going to abandon us.”

State forestry officials hope to save more than $1 million in yearly overtime costs as a result of the move.

The Clark County Fire Department, already stretched thin by a 45 percent spike in out-of-area calls to North Las Vegas, projects to lose around the same amount in additional yearly personnel and vehicle maintenance costs.

Clark County Assistant Fire Chief Mike Johnson, who oversees deployment of 30 volunteers at Mount Charleston’s county-subsidized fire department, said most of the station’s volunteers work in the Las Vegas Valley, leaving daytime coverage of Mount Charleston emergencies to the county’s nearest fully manned station, 45 minutes away on Elkhorn Road.

Johnson said county officials don’t yet plan to add trucks and equipment or post full-time fire and emergency medical crews on the mountain. He is heartened by state and county officials’ dialogue over the realignment but said he didn’t want to guess at its possible consequences.

“Truthfully, I don’t know the cost, and I don’t know what our ability is to expand between now and the deadline,” Johnson said. “There is a lot still left to be determined as far as coverage, but I think about the response model out there (at Mount Charleston), and currently, it seems to meet the need.

“I don’t know what to worry about until I know the definition of some of the things involved in the transition, so the most important thing will be to sit down and brainstorm with the state people and leave all the options on the table.”

Contact Centennial and North Las Vegas View reporter James DeHaven at jdehaven@viewnews.com or 702-477-3839.