CLE ELUM, Wash. -- A rural Kittitas County fire district is suing the U.S. Forest Service a second time over access to its mountain station when it is cut off by snow in the winter.
Kittitas County Fire District No. 8 is asking a U.S. District Court judge in Yakima to allow it to plow a 1,500-foot stretch of road leading to its station. The station is just uphill from the Crystal Springs Sno-Park about 22 miles west of Cle Elum.
"We've been so mistreated by the Forest Service and their actions," said Robert Angrisano, a fire commissioner and volunteer firefighter.
Nancy Jones, a spokeswoman with the Cle Elum Ranger District, said Forest Service officials would not discuss the issue on advice of their attorneys.
The debate goes back to 2005, when the all-volunteer district built the station along Forest Road 54, also known as Stampede Pass Road.
Firefighters and emergency medical technicians use the facility to respond to fires, collisions on nearby Interstate 90 and emergencies involving snowmobiling and other winter recreation.
However, the Cle Elum District maintains the area as a system of groomed recreational trails and closes Stampede Pass Road in the winter. Forest Service officials, backed by recreation enthusiasts, said that mixing full-size vehicles and snowmobiles would be unsafe. Accordingly, they don't allow the road to be plowed.
Without access to the station, responders must drive to one of the district's other two stations -- at least eight miles away -- increasing response times in matters of life and death, Angrisano said. The station allows volunteers to shave up to 30 minutes off a response to an accident victim on I-90 and up to two hours for an emergency in the backcountry, he said.
For the first couple of years after the station was built, firefighters reached it via a back road that cut across private, state and federal land. In 2008, the Forest Service blocked the path with boulders, calling it "an illegal road" in a letter to U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco.
The fire district first filed a federal lawsuit in 2009, but a judge ordered the two parties to find a solution.
For a while, it appeared they had.
Washington State Parks and a private landowner had been negotiating to let the fire district build a new route that did not cross Forest Service land, Angrisano said. But in January, the Forest Service convinced State Parks to drop the idea after a nearby homeowner began plowing a portion of Forest Road 54, Angrisano said.
Angrisano said the firefighter access and the private homeowner issues are unconnected: "No relevancy whatsoever."
The lawsuit could drag on for a year or more, but the fire district plans to seek an injunction that will allow firefighters access this year, Angrisano said.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
