Fire call largely ignored

Poor turnout follows airing of complaints

By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

On the heels of a meeting with the mayor and city administrator but not their fire chief, only two Marion firefighters responded with Chief Chris Killough to fight a hay fire Monday.

So few firefighters responded that Killough had to ask for help from Florence and Cedar Point.

When dispatchers paged Marion firefighters late Monday morning, Killough and two firefighters in a single brush truck responded.

Short-handed, Killough radioed for more firefighters, but firefighters pressed their microphone buttons and did not go to the fire.

Florence firefighters were called and brought a tanker and two brush trucks to help.

Cedar Point firefighters were summoned as well.

The fire was extinguished and hot spots checked within 50 minutes.

Killough said the microphone presses, which can be linked to specific radios on monitoring equipment like the newspaper’s, were a technical issue. He referred questions about the meeting to City Administrator Bryan Wells.

“It’s an internal personnel matter at this time that we’re evaluating,” Wells said of the meeting with firefighters.

Wells said he didn’t know about firefighters’ response to Monday’s fire until a reporter for the Record told him.

“I learned about the mic press thing that I was not knowledgeable about,” Wells said.

Contacted Monday about the department’s short-handed response to the hay fire, Mayor Mike Powers said he hadn’t known about it.

“The information you have provided surprises me,” Powers said. “We will certainly look into it.”

Powers didn’t confirm or deny meeting with firefighters and Wells. He said he didn’t have enough information to comment but would comment when he had more information.

Later Monday, although they eventually were told they wouldn’t be needed, a much larger number of Marion firefighters responded to a dispatch to join Hillsboro and Durham firefighters at a fire caused by lightning striking a service station’s canopy in Hillsboro.