4th of July Report and Statistics presented by Fire Chief Mike Thuirer to city council last night:
4th stats: A lotta calls…OT, not too bad
Covering Ocean Shores and its neighbors
Covering Ocean Shores and its neighbors
4th of July Report and Statistics presented by Fire Chief Mike Thuirer to city council last night:
The North Beach News 
Looking at the numbers it seems that OT has been slightly reduced. That, however, is only part of the story. If you multiply those OT hours by the average guesstimated rate of pay of, for discussion only, $35 per hour you get a grim picture of what the 4th of July “come on down and blow us up” policy costs the taxpayers. We get the noise and the traffic and the inconvenience and some business owners clean up; of course only financially, the residents are left to do the real clean up or pay city staff to do it. What a deal! I also see that we are still incurring even greater liability by still doing “surf rescue”, for which we are no longer trained or equipped. The city bought several “drones” to act as rescue equipment, at considerable cost, in order to lower or eliminate liability for an aging or poorly performing surf rescue team. It seems, however, that our staff has been too “busy” or disinterested to get trained or licensed to operate them so they just lay unused and uncharged in storage. As is usually the case, staff reports and statistics tell us only what they want us to hear, the rest of the story is left to us to ferret out.
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