Chelan County Fire District 6 Wildfire Public Safety Equipment Cache
Chelan County Fire District 6 Wildfire Public Safety Equipment Cache – Monitor, WA - 3164 Main Street, Monitor, WA 98836
Amount Requested: $1,500,000
The funding would be used for the purchase of a wildfire support vehicle and a bulldozer for fire containment, alongside associated firefighting equipment required to provide a rapid, improved response to wildfire incidents. The project is an appropriate use of taxpayer funds because, according to reports drafted by the United States Forest Service, the Chelan community has the greatest cumulative housing-unit exposure to wildfire in Washington state and has a higher risk of damage or destruction of homes and businesses from wildland fires than 99 percent of communities across the United States. The lack of immediately available equipment and resources to attack wildfires limits firefighters’ ability to protect the public from large-scale fires such as those experienced in 2025. Reliance on external state and federal agencies to supply these resources has resulted in multi-day delays in implementing attacks on past wildfires.
The proposed Wildfire Public Safety Equipment Cache will ensure that Chelan County Fire District No. 6 provides a rapid and well-equipped response to any wildfire incident. These new resources will ultimately support the activities and safety of two new two-person summer firefighting crews. In addition, resources will be made available to adjacent auto aid fire districts.
Federal nexus: Section 306 of the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act, 7 U.S. Code section 1926(a)