Volunteer Firefighters Refuse To Leave Julian Station
Speaker 1: 00:00 The saga of the Julian Volunteer Fire Department continued today in court. Opponents of the move to switch Julian from a volunteer fire department to professional county firefighters want a temporary restraining order to halt the takeover. This comes after a standoff at the Julian fire stations. Since Monday afternoon San Diego County officials tried to take charge of the station, but volunteer firefighters refuse them entry and lock themselves inside. Journey me as KPBS reporter, Prius Schrieffer who's been following this story for several months now. And Priya, welcome to the program Priya. What happened today? Speaker 2: 00:39 So today the Julian volunteer firefighters lawyers is trying to get a temporary restraining order against the county. They also want the judge to uphold a ruling from last Friday that found the original application from last year is Julian fire protection board null and void based on the Brown Act. Now the Brown act guarantees the public's right to attend and participate in meetings of local legislative bodies. The volunteer firefighters told me that they believe that the three board members from last year conspired with Dianne Jacob to get the volunteer fire department dissolved county supervisor diet. Correct. So the fire fighters now believed that the county is in contempt of court based on Fridays decision. So both sides were really hoping for some answers today and some resolution, but Lafco the local agency formation commission, they are the agency that's been sort of overseeing this whole process. They actually asked for a new judge today. So right now we're actually waiting to find out if they're going to get a new courtroom and then we'll either have the hearing happen this afternoon or on Monday, but several people from Julian actually drove all the way to San Diego today to try to get some answers. So everyone has their fingers crossed that something's going to happen today. Speaker 1: 01:57 Where does the public vote that came out against the volunteer fire department? Where does that fit in? Speaker 2: 02:03 Right. This has been extremely confusing. So as you mentioned, the last board voted to dissolve the fire department. So temporarily cal fire had been in that fire station since the summer. Then the volunteers actually gathered enough signatures on a petition to bring the issue to a special election. That election just happened a few weeks ago and the citizens of the Julian Quia Maca area, 54% of them voted to dissolve the volunteers and to go with the county. However, since then, um, this lawsuit was actually filed a year ago. So it's really interesting timing that a judge was able to rule on it on Friday, just days before Lafco was supposed to meet to either decide if they were going to uphold the results of that special election a few few weeks ago or not. And so LAFCO decided to go along with the citizens of the area and to uphold that decision. The lawyer for the volunteer firefighters, however, brought that ruling from Friday into the LAFCO meeting. Speaker 2: 03:04 And you know, that's what the volunteer firefighters are really mad about right now. They feel as though the county and Lafco is ignoring Friday's rulings. So everything is up in the air. Can you give us more detail about what's been happening in Julian this week? What is the county attempting to do at that fire station? So according to Julian residents, cal fire employees and sheriff deputies actually showed up to the Julian station on Monday. The Julian residents say that they were intimidating them. Julian volunteers have now locked themselves inside the station. They've actually covered the front door window with all of the court documents from Friday's ruling and they have their emergency vehicles parked in front of the roll up doors or the engines exit and enter the station. They say that they're afraid to leave because they think cal fire will come in and take over the station. Speaker 2: 03:56 I actually got a chance to catch up with one of the fire protection board members, Bill Everett. So let's take a listen to what he had to say about what's going on right now. They have turned off our paging system. In other words, we're not receiving calls. If somebody has an emergency and they dial nine one one, uh, that information is not forwarded to us. So we're unable to respond to protect our community, which is our basic mission. So as you can hear from him right there, they're sitting in the fire station, but they can't respond to calls. And they won't go outside because they're afraid if they do, the cal fire employees will come in. So right now all of the emergencies are being responded to by cal fire employees. And I should also mention that this was involving two different fire stations, one in Quia Maca and one and Julian, the county spokesperson told me that they have been able to get into the Quia Maca station and according to the Julian people, they've changed all the locks and the county tells me that they're assessing all the equipment right now and doing an inventory of everything that's in that station. Speaker 2: 04:55 So they've managed to get one station but not the other one. One of the volunteers so adamant about keeping a professional fire fighting force out of Julian. Yeah, that's kind of the million dollar question here. And that's the question that everyone has been asking me since I've been covering the story. A lot of this goes back to the Cedar Fire in 2003 where the volunteers really believed that the county kind of abandoned them and that they, that the only reason they were able to save so many houses and save the area was because of the volunteers. You also have to remember that this is the last all volunteer fire force in San Diego County and that's something that these people are really proud of. In general, these are the kind of people who don't really like government intervention. They really believe that this is our town. We understand the people here, we understand the land and we can run our agencies and respond to emergencies better than outsiders. Speaker 2: 05:50 What happens next? Now one of two things can happen. The judge today or on Monday can uphold the ruling from Friday and grant the volunteer firefighters a temporary restraining order or he can reverse the Friday decision and allow the county to take over. So the county spokesperson I talked to said that that's what they're waiting for. Their planning to go ahead and take over the fire department, but they're waiting for this ruling to happen so they can figure out what next steps to take. I've been speaking with KPBS reporter Prius Shridhar. Thank you so much. Thanks.
