Editorial: Naked Paradise

The people of the Mountain Communities see the Kern County Fire Department as the most service-oriented agency of county government. The firefighters who work here are inspiring. They are passionate about doing their jobs well. But sometimes desire is not enough.

The events of June 2008 illustrate why 67 percent of mountain voters cast a ballot for change in the June 3 County Supervisor’s election. They are concerned that the status quo is dangerous and getting worse. They say the county is collecting taxes without providing equal services and subsidizing urban centers with rural dollars. Some ask if there has been a recent policy change, downshifting deployment of emergency assistance here.

The month of June is just the beginning of fire season, but it has already been disastrous. This region’s resources are stretched beyond capacity, leaving it exposed to harm. Just read the log books.

On June 6, all available resources on the mountain were sent to a grass fire along Interstate 5. The wildfire threatened homes in Lebec’s Digier Canyon. Crews from Pine Mountain, Frazier Park, Lebec, Mettler and more were clustered northeast of Frazier mountain. No crew was left to cover the Pine Mountain region, 20 miles away.

At about 6 p.m., over at the Pine Mountain Club pool, off-duty lifeguard Jeremy Veith was found by a fellow lifeguard going into convulsions. At almost the same moment, two unrelated medical aid calls from Frazier Park and Lake of the Woods were received by the county. The Hall ambulance in Frazier Park and a back-up crew of firefighters responded to those calls.

When the 911 dispatch from Pine Mountain came in, Hall’s ambulance was on its way off the mountain. Jeremy Veith’s teenage lifeguard friends followed their first-responder training perfectly, but they waited for what seemed to them forever for the Kern County Emergency Medical Service system to kick into gear. No firefighter EMTs arrived. No ambulance paramedics. The lifeguards waited 44 minutes for the Kern County Fire Department. It would be over an hour before a Hall medevac helicopter would finally begin transporting the young man to a hospital.

Veith’s family, friends and doctors stood vigil for a week at the hospital until his EEG tests were cleared.

Hall may have been slow to provide help, but their bill for $13,000 was already waiting for the family when they returned home from the hospital. On the kitchen counter, beside Hall’s bill, were 20 notes from mountain neighbors and friends, reporting the times they had checked in to care for the family’s pets without being asked, to water their plants and to leave homemade food. That is community.

Then, on June 18, a house in Lebec burned to the ground.

Hours later, while Frazier Park’s firefighters were still helping to clean up that site, a residence within a few blocks of Frazier Park Fire Station 57 went up in flames. John Janson had purchased the home for his mother years ago because it was so close to the fire station. But on June 18 no engine was there.

Janson’s renter, Robert Reese, was taken to the Sherman Oaks Burn Hospital for surgery. Fortunately, he is recovering, but the question Reese asks from his hospital bed is haunting: "Where were they?" Despite his burns, he had used a garden hose to try to control the flames for twenty minutes while waiting for the engines to arrive.

This week, in Lockwood Valley, Dale Brouse’s neighbors and friends are grieving.

They won’t be able to bring comforting soups and homebaked bread or even a Noilly Pratt Martini to their old friend. He won’t be coming home.

On June 27 the 911 call went to Kern County because Ventura County cannot reach Lockwood Valley with sufficient resources and must contract with Kern for coverage.

Three minutes after Lockwood Valley neighbors made the 5:56 a.m. call, Kern County Fire Station 57 was dispatched for the 12 mile drive to Dale Brouse’s home. Ventura County’s engines would not arrive for another hour and a half, from Ojai.

Two Kern County firefighters arrived in a patrol truck within 18 minutes. Engine 57 arrived three minutes later, at 6:21 a.m., driven by the station’s third firefighter. By then the portion of the house where Brouse died was already 70 percent engulfed in flames. Still, firefighters entered the burning structure to try to save him. There is no doubt the personnel on the ground are doing their jobs.

Today, the Mountain Community’s questions point to administrative decisions in Bakersfield (and for Lockwood Valley, they point to Ventura).

Why aren’t adequate resources brought from Bakersfield to help along Interstate 5 and in Lebec, instead of leaving far-flung mountain stations empty and unavailable when trouble strikes?

Why doesn’t the Kern County Department of Emergency Medical Services have higher standards for the ‘Exclusive Operating Area’ contract given to Hall ambulance, which covers 14,000 people and all the traffic accidents on Interstate 5 along the Grapevine with one staffed ambulance?

Why are the Board of Supervisors- whose fire department is the 10th largest in the state-not ashamed to have the only fire department within the top 15 that has no firefighter paramedic program?

On February 15, 2005 Karen Bailey watched her husband die while she waited 57 minutes for Hall Ambulance to reach him. On January 24, 2008 a Hall driver said he couldn’t come into Pine Mountain to help Suellyn L’Dera. It took four hours for her to get to the hospital. Bailey, L’Dera’s husband and friends of the Veiths know something needs to change. It is time that the Kern County Board of Supervisors honor June’s message too.

—Patric Hedlund

This is part of the July 04, 2008 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

Have an opinion on this matter? We'd like to hear from you.