Laramie County, WY, Fire Chief Pleads for Funds to Rebuild Station Destroyed by Fire
Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, Cheyenne
(TNS)
CHEYENNE – The Laramie County Fire Authority needs $250,000 in emergency mineral royalty grant funding from the state to rebuild a fire station that burned down in mid-January. But whether it gets that money depends on the outcome of an emergency meeting of the State Loan and Investment Board (SLIB) next week.
LCFA Chief Jason Caughey waited nearly nine hours Thursday on an empty stomach — minus a handful of City Drug popcorn provided by the governor — to sway the state’s top five elected officials to approve the application. A staff member from the Office of State Lands and Investments told SLIB members a few documents were missing from LCFA’s application — but Caughey assured members the missing documents were available.
SLIB Chairman Gov. Mark Gordon proposed holding an emergency meeting next week to review the application once all the documents are collected. For Caughey, time is money.
The construction process for Fire Station 74 has already begun with the funds supplied by the insurance company, Caughey said. But insurance only covered 68% of total construction costs, and the county fire authority depleted its reserves to replace machinery lost in the fire.
If the state doesn’t provide the emergency funding, then LCFA will have to take out a loan, which means paying an additional 5.5% to 7% interest rate, Caughey said, and local taxpayers will be burdened with the cost.
Why now?
The Laramie County Planning Department utilizes an emergency building permit program in the event of a natural disaster or fire, Caughey said. If the facility is rebuilt within one year, “it doesn’t have to jump through all of the same hoops that a normal building process would.”
“By not being able to complete this project within one year, it’s going to cost us and the taxpayers a significant amount more money,” Caughey said. “To rebuild that same existing station today, I anticipate 25% more.”
In mid-January, Laramie County firefighters responded to a structure fire at one of their own stations, Fire Station 74 on Yellowstone Road. Three wildland firefighter trucks were lost, along with the station itself.
Caughey submitted an application for emergency mineral royalty grant (MRG) funding a week before the deadline.
The Office of State Lands and Investments (OSLI) approved the LCFA’s project application but found it did not constitute “emergency” MRG funds. The OSLI recommended deferring the fire authority’s application for regular MRG funds, which would be approved during the SLIB’s special meeting on June 20.
The Wyoming State Fire Marshal’s Office and Wyoming State Forestry Division also did not believe the application qualified for emergency funding from the state.
In a combined letter to SLIB members, these officials found the cost of this project “appears to fall within the funds available to the district to construct without additional financial assistance,” among other reasons to disqualify it for emergency funds.
But, according to Caughey, the LCFA is “pinching pennies.” Aside from their depleted reserves, the LCFA took a major hit from a new property tax cut bill that was recently passed by the Wyoming Legislature.
“This year, we’ve lost 25% of our revenue from property tax,” Caughey said, “which doesn’t sound significant, but it’s $250,000 out of our $2 million budget.”
Salaries eat up 80% of the fire authority’s total budget, he added.
“What few pennies we have left are going to be augmented to make sure that we can continue to supply the services to our community,” he said.
An emotional loss
Any fire structure loss can be a devastating event, and LCFA firefighters weren’t exempt from the emotional devastation of responding to a fire at one of their own stations. Fire Station 74 had been a part of the fire community for over 50 years, since it was first built in 1974.
The LCFA chief told state officials a staff member was welding on one of the fire trucks in Fire Station 74 a few hours before the fire. The staff member went home around 4 p.m., three-and-a-half hours before the witnesses driving down Yellowstone Road spotted the fire.
“It appears that where he was welding, it was the ignition source,” Caughey said.
Caughey previously told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle it was a lesson in empathy for many of the firefighters who’d never personally lost a home or property in a structure fire before.
“Any time you respond to your own fire station for an incident like that, it’s emotional because of the connection that our fires have to their own buildings,” Caughey said. “Understanding the emotions that go with an event like this is going to make our firefighters better when dealing with the citizens and their tragedies.”
Nearly lost in the structure fire was the locker of late Assistant Chief Charles “Chuck” Scottini, a “true grit” volunteer firefighter, according to Laramie County Fire District 1 Chief Darrick Mittlestadt.
“(He was) one of those ‘true grit’ volunteers that came in and would work on things over the weekends and take care of the trucks, the station, projects, help with training and everything else,” Mittlestadt said.
Scottini died in April 2021, six months after he contracted COVID-19 while on a wildland fire assignment in Colorado. He had been a firefighter with Laramie County Fire District 2 since 1998.
Scottini’s locker in Station 74 was saved, according to Caughey.
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