YAKIMA -- Yakima School District officials are hoping to revive a firefighter training program at the district’s vocational school.
The firefighting class, which district officials said has been offered for more than 10 years, shut down in January due to declining enrollment, district spokeswoman Kirsten Fitterer said. The instructor also resigned.
The district is looking for a new instructor and hopes to reinstate the two-year program that gives students basic training in firefighting to prepare them to serve as professional or volunteer firefighters.
“We have a strong candidate that has applied, so we are hopeful, but the hiring process is not yet complete,” said Fitterer, who wouldn’t name the candidate.
The shutdown is the latest difficulty the program has faced in recent years.
Prior to the 2015-16 school year, the class was taught by Joe Chinco, then a lieutenant with the Yakima Fire Department. In July 2015, Chinco was charged with sexual misconduct with a minor and witness tampering after authorities said he had sex with a 17-year-old girl who was enrolled in the program.
Chinco, 52, was on paid administrative leave since May 2015 when the investigation began and retired from the department in August 2015. The criminal charges were dismissed without prejudice — meaning prosecutors can re-file the charges if circumstances change — in July 2016, when his accuser was deployed to South Korea with the U.S. military.
The most-recent instructor, Dan White, resigned in December, and the class was taught by a substitute until last month, when it was discontinued because there were roughly a dozen students enrolled in the program. YV-Tech Director Craig Dwight said there should be at least 16 students.
In his resignation letter, White said it was in his best interest to quit since there was no longer a morning session of the program. Attempts to contact White, who does not have a listed phone number, were not successful.
Jacob Joy, who was enrolled in the program, said the class’ cancellation was disappointing — he was considering firefighting as a career. While he and other students would have preferred White focus on structure rather than wild land fires, Joy said he would re-enroll if the opportunity arose.
However, the class has received mixed reviews from some local fire officials.
East Valley Fire Department Lt. Trevor Lenseigne said the district has one firefighter who came out of the program. He and Brian Vogel, chief of Yakima County Fire District 5 in the Lower Valley, said the program has merit in that potential recruits get some training prior to coming in, helping them get out in the field quicker.
But Selah Fire Chief Gary Hanna said the recruits he’s seen come out of the program were not successful. He believes it was a case of those students lacking the commitment to work with a fire department.
• Donald W. Meyers can be reached at 509-577-7748 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/donaldwmeyers.
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