Medic One planning move

By Jack Kintner

North Whatcom Fire and Rescue Services (NWFRS) fire administrator Dave Crossen announced that the Bellingham Fire Department plans to relocate its Medic One facility from Grandview Road back to Bellingham, a move Crossen opposes.

The announcement came during the regular monthly meeting of the NWFRS board of directors held this month at district 3’s headquarters in Lynden.

“They’ve agreed to furnish Advanced Life Support (ALS) services to the county through 2007,”Crossen said, “at which point the county may set up its own service. But until a new system gets set up, we don’t want them to change the way they’ve had it.”

Technically known as Medic Three satellite station, the facility shares a site with fire district 7’s station at the corner of Grandview and Enterprise roads, a few hundred yards east of I-5 on the Grandview Road exit (266).

Crossen said he’s written to the Bellingham department to urge them to leave things as they are until a new system is in place. “Otherwise our response time out here is just that much longer,” Crossen said.
Calls for information were returned by neither division chief Roger Christianson, medical services officer with the Bellingham department, nor from the mayor’s office in Bellingham.

In other business, the directors elected Roger Hawley to succeed Butch Hinchey as NWFRS board president, and approved the sale of the shop building next to district 3 headquarters to the city of Lynden for $920,000. Lynden reportedly plans to use the facility as a police station.