North Whatcom Fire and Rescue mulls future of Semiahmoo station

North Whatcom Fire and Rescue (NWFR) chief Jason Van Der Veen started his career in firefighting at Station 62 in Semiahmoo. In the mid-1990s, the small fire station had room for three resident firefighters, living in dorm-style rooms that left just enough space for one fire engine and one aid car.

To Van Der Veen’s knowledge, that was the last time the Semiahmoo station was fully staffed. Three decades later, the building sits empty most days, without a crew to staff it, in desperate need of renovations and with its future in question.

A June emergency declaration by NWFR said the station, at 9001 Semiahmoo Parkway just north of Semiahmoo Golf and Country Club, will require more than the original $350,000 upgrade approved in December 2023 to mitigate “severe water damage.”

With a NWFR board of commissioners meeting set for Thursday, September 19, Van Der Veen said the department commissioners will discuss the future of the station, including considering relinquishing the property back to the city of Blaine.

NWFR purchased property from the city of Blaine for $1 as part of a quit claim deed on May 8, 2013. According to the purchase agreement, the city would consider the property to be surplus so long as NWFR “continues to use it as an active fire station serving the city of Blaine.”

The document defined an active fire station as one with both the capability and active use of its firefighting staff. The Semiahmoo station has not had firefighters in the station since NWFR took over in 2013, Van Der Veen said.

“A building is great, but it takes money to staff it,” Van Der Veen said. “No agency’s ever had the money to staff it.”

Van Der Veen said that staffing is based on call volumes and a station’s location to those heavy-call areas. Other stations, like the ones on Odell Road in Blaine and Birch Bay-Lynden Road in Birch Bay, are much more utilized due to their central locations. Van Der Veen said the lack of amenities and population make Station 62 unattractive to full-time and volunteer firefighters.

“There’s certainly people out there, but not in the numbers where you could justify putting a crew out there,” Van Der Veen said of Semiahmoo. “[NWFR] has over time tried to staff it with a sleeper program or volunteers, and it’s just never worked. People who live in million-dollar houses don’t volunteer for their local fire department.”

Van Der Veen said response times to emergency calls on Semiahmoo from dispatch to arrival is typically nine minutes 30 seconds. So far in 2024, NWFR responded to 119 calls for service in the area, 86 of which were EMS, Van Der Veen said.

The building was originally constructed by the Trillium Corporation in the early ’90s before being gifted to the city of Blaine in 1993 through a similar quit claim deed process.

Van Der Veen said that while problems at the station are numerous, NWFR is more concerned with safety at the Birch Bay station, and keeping the books balanced after a failed levy lid lift in the 2024 primary election.

“I don’t see us staffing it in the foreseeable future,” Van Der Veen said. “It could better serve the community as something different.”

NWFR’s commissioner meeting will be held at Station 61, 9408 Odell Road in Blaine on Thursday, September 19 at 10:30 a.m.