The Washington Fire Chiefs is concerned about the recent announcement of further rate increases by Labor & Industries.  We have expressed our concerns to Director Joel Sacks, through the following letter, and would encourage you to express concern on behalf of your individual agency as well.

The Washington Fire Chiefs has developed a list of their “top ten” Washington businesses for 2015.  They evaluated businesses based on fire service cultural principles including: a strong connection to Washington State, a reputation for positive labor management relations, community involvement and an internal culture demonstrating servant leadership...

The IAFC BOD has unanimously voted to address the issue of their dues structure and has requested a report from their Executive Director with the intention of holding a summit to discuss the issues surrounding the topic to include whether or not IAFC Division dues should remain mandatory as part of the IAFC membership dues. Each IAFC Division enjoys autonomy from the IAFC BOD and the State fire chief associations. One example of IAFC Division autonomy is the amount of Division dues which are set by the Division leadership and its membership. The amount charged varies from Division to Division and the IAFC has no formal say on the Division dues. This disparity creates risk for the IAFC in that an increase in IAFC Division dues could have significant negative consequences for the IAFC in the future. The mandatory IAFC Division dues currently does impact IAFC Section’s in that many members have limited association dollars to spend and the only discretionary spending is at the IAFC Section level... 

2015 brought the West Coast and the State of Washington unusually hot and dry weather conditions that increased the number and severity of fires across our state. Several jurisdictions feared that the use of personal fireworks around the 4th of July would further increase fires and sought to limit or ban the use of fireworks due to extreme fire danger conditions.

Washington’s current fireworks law, RCW 70.77, states that any city or county ordinances that are more restrictive than state law shall have an effective date no sooner than one year after adoption. So the jurisdictions that did not already have a local ordinance in place were left without an option to limit or ban sales and use of fireworks due to the extreme fire danger...