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The COVID-19 pandemic caused a year-long decline in emergency service calls for Skagit County Fire District 13 near La Conner.

Those call numbers have finally begun to rebound, outpacing 2020 levels, and now fire district personnel themselves are to be on the receiving end of health care services in the form of mandatory coronavirus vaccinations.

District Commissioners Bruce Shellhamer and John Doyle last Friday approved a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the district’s health care providers.

The policy follows Gov. Jay Inslee’s Aug. 9 proclamation, which mandates that all health care providers who engage in work for the fire district be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 18.

Commissioner J.J. Wilbur missed the panel’s hybrid meeting.

“The governor set down expectations of what we have to have for our people, that we have to be vaccinated by Oct. 18,” Fire Chief Wood Weiss told commissioners. “So far, it looks like most of our people are in line with that.”

Secretary Tracy Berg confirmed that two persons affiliated with the fire district have tested positive for COVID-19.

Under terms of the district policy, health care providers who have not been fully vaccinated or received an accommodation due to disability or sincerely held religious belief will be subject to dismissal.

The local fire district can ill afford any loss of personnel at this point due to an unusually large number of firefighters having left for positions at larger departments.

“I’m in the middle of a personnel crisis,” Berg said. “We’re competing with people going to career jobs. We’ve had nine go this year. We’re also competing against bigger departments looking for part-time shifters.

“Sedro-Woolley,” said Weiss, “is tough. It’s a municipality so it has more money available, plus health care available for their people.”

In order to retain what Weiss said were “young people who are well exceeding expectations,” commissioners committed to look at raising pay rates within its next budget cycle.

“I would like to review this in context with the entire budget,” said Doyle, who also lamented the loss of talent to other locales. “That way we’ll be able to analyze it in a little greater detail.”

Shellhamer, the commission chair, concurred.

“We need to fairly support our people,” he said. “We need to attract and retain our personnel.”

“We’ve trained people and then had them get hired for career jobs a couple months later,” Weiss stressed. “That’s a real kick in the shins. It used to happen just a couple times a year. But it’s a whole new world now.”

The personnel crunch comes at an especially busy time.

“We’ve had our biggest month since COVID-19,” said Weiss. “We’ve had a lot of medical calls.”

And, as the mandatory vaccine policy indicates, COVID-19 isn’t going away. Weiss said nearly 700 new cases had been recorded in Skagit County over the past month, about 50 of them in the District 13 service area.

“We’re getting back into dealing with this,” Weiss said. “The (delta) variant is causing all kinds of problems.”

Another problem area this summer – as was predicted months ago – has been wildland fires.

“We’ve been called to more wildland fires this year than ever before in my career and that’s going back 20 years,” the fire chief said, noting that more troubling is some of those blazes were suspicious in nature.

“The fire marshal is looking into them,” Weiss said. “A lot of these fires have been deep in the woods.”

Shellhamer paid tribute at the meeting’s end to all firefighters and emergency service personnel, mindful that the next day was the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. “The lasting image I have,” said Shellhamer, “is of firefighters and EMTs running to the towers while people were trying to get out. You’re the people who run into danger. I just want to thank you for all you do and your families’ sacrifices especially as we honor everybody who sacrificed so much on 9/11.”

Also: Fire District Capt. Ted Taylor, fondly dubbed “Captain Catastrophe,” said he will put together a local exercise for the 2021 Great Shake Out event scheduled Oct. 21 on the West Coast. The drills are an annual opportunity to practice what to do during earthquakes and tsunamis and how to improve preparedness.