‘A siren wails’
Family with roots back to 1860s devastated in wake of fire, grateful for help so far
Louie and Chris Gookin, grandparents with family roots in Tuolumne County going back to the 1860s, lost almost everything they owned in the fire early Friday that destroyed their home just a block away from an unstaffed fire station on an edge of old town Columbia. Their pet cat died in the fire, but no human lives were lost.
“We couldn’t call 911,” Chris Gookin, whose full first name is Christine, said Tuesday morning after meeting with an insurance adjuster at the remains of the home where they’d lived since 1969. “We were lucky to get out with our lives.”
She gestured to a pile of aged, burned newspapers and said, “This is what’s been lost, all the photos and stories of things our children and grandchildren did, the pictures, the drawings, and the recipes. We are grateful for everything the firefighters did, they did everything they could. It could have been a lot worse for the rest of the community. The fire didn’t spread. Nobody died.”
Louie Gookin ran to Station 74 to sound an alarm at 2:49 a.m. Friday during the fire, to warn people in the community of the immediate danger.
Cal Fire said the fire was reported about 3 a.m. Friday in the 11400 block of Yankee Hill Road with a single-story structure fully on fire with power lines down and no spread to vegetation. The agency said the fire was contained at 4:31 a.m. The cause of the fire remained under investigation as of Tuesday.
“If not for Cal Fire and the other firefighters that responded,” Chris Gookin said, “that fire could have been so much worse. We are so lucky for our lives.”
Their house burned down a block away from Columbia Fire Protection District Station 74 at 11328 Jackson St. It was their first interview with any news agency since the fire. They declined to be photographed at the scene of so much devastation and destruction.
Until the fire broke out early Friday, they lived at 11424 Yankee Hill Road, less than two football fields from Station 74, which is owned by a nonprofit called Columbia Volunteer Fire Department Engine Co. No. 1 that does not fight fires. Station 74 has been unstaffed in recent months due to limited revenues produced by Columbia Fire Protection District.
The Gookins are staying with relatives in Columbia, and though they lost everything in the fire, they feel blessed by many people who have donated to help them get by since the blaze early Friday.
“Everyone has been so helpful, including firefighters,” Chris Gookin said. “They’ve donated things we need. They’ve given us money. People have been so generous and so kind. We feel like a couple of sick dogs that just want to lie down and lick our wounds. But we know we’ll make it back.”
“There’s a lot of people who need help more than we do,” Louie Gookin said. “It just looks to me like there’s a firehouse down here, there’s fire trucks
in there, but there’s no response to the fire right here. There are changes that need to be made.”
The Gookins said they agree with and appreciate what their son, Pete Gookin, Columbia Air Attack’s senior helicopter pilot, posted to social media about how Louie Gookin ran to Station 74 to sound the alarm.
“People needed to know,” Chris Gookin said. “This was a dangerous fire, it was so hot.”
The Gookins are very concerned that they live so close to an unstaffed fire station and fire engines that proved to be useless when a blaze broke out at their place.
“What we have a problem with is we have a firehouse here with engines just a block away,” Louie Gookin said. “There should be a way they can use it.”
Stan Steiner with the Columbia Fire Protection District Board of Directors declined to comment Tuesday and referred questions to the district chief, Mark Ferreira. Steiner said the next district board meeting is scheduled at 4 p.m. Tuesday, June 14, at Station 74. The meeting is public.
Ferreira talked about his department’s finance woes last July. Columbia Fire Protection District has multiple fire engines, but lacks adequate staffing due to revenue shortages for hiring and retaining firefighter interns from Columbia College, said Ferreira, who was making $700 a month in July.
“We have staffing on a very limited basis,” Ferreira said in July. “When COVID hit a year-and-ahalf ago, we put a freeze on hiring. When we started hiring again, the ones we wanted to recruit got hired by other agencies, including Cal Fire. My budget is $87,000 a year. We get $62,000 from property tax revenues.”
Columbia Fire Protection District covers 1.1 square miles that’s occupied mostly by Columbia State Historic Park, which Ferreira said does not have to pay property taxes.
The state park does not pay anything for fire services to Columbia Fire Protection District, Ferreira said, and the district gets no share of county Transient Occupancy Taxes paid by tourists and other visitors who frequent hotels and motels.
The situation hasn’t changed at Columbia Fire Protection District since last July, Ferreira said Tuesday.
“This breaks my heart that this happened in my district,” Ferreira said. “I know the Gookins. It’s tragic. We’re very grateful everybody was able to get out alive. I wish we could have been staffed that day.”
Columbia Fire Protection District can currently afford to staff its firehouse and one engine one to two days a week on a volunteer fire department model, because it cannot afford to pay any firefighters fulltime salaries, Ferreira said.
“I have two personnel working on my roster now,” Ferreira said. “We were unstaffed at the time of the fire due to budget restrictions.
“We’re looking at an assortment of options for increasing revenue for fulltime staffing. It’s not just Columbia Fire that has issues with staffing. Stockton and San Francisco have openings they can’t fill. It’s unfortunate when it comes to public safety, we don’t have people lining up to work for next to nothing.”
Ron Montoya is with the nonprofit Columbia Volunteer Fire Department Engine Co. No. 1 that owns Station 74 and leases space to Columbia Fire Protection District.
“We had a garage full of equipment that’s not manned due to lack of funds,” Montoya said Tuesday. “It’s a real shame. That equipment was a minute away from that house on fire. From what I understand the fire district is trying to expand to get more revenue. All we do is rent space to the district. But they’ve been useless for at least six months. There’s nobody there to man the equipment.”
Asked to clearly state the purpose of Columbia Volunteer Fire Department Engine Co. No. 1, Montoya said, “We do not fight fires. We take care of historic equipment.”
On Sunday, Adam Artzer, a board member with Tuolumne Fire District, sent a scathing assessment of what happened Friday at the Gookins to the county Board of Supervisors and county administrators.
Artzer’s statement begins, “582 feet. That’s how far away this home of 53 years is away from a fire station. A fire station that isn’t staffed due to Tuolumne County’s failure to acknowledge that they have a major crisis. A problem that Tuolumne County will not admit they have, will they now?”
Artzer said Tuesday he was speaking for himself, not Tuolumne Fire District, and he signed his message as a “concerned citizen.”
County Administrator Tracie Riggs referred questions to Nick Casci, chief of Tuolumne County Fire and Cal Fire’s Tuolumne-calaveras Unit.
Casci said the fire station Artzer addressed is the Columbia Fire District Station.
“The address of the fire was just outside the Columbia Fire District boundaries in Tuolumne County Fire Department response area; however, Columbia Fire District would provide the first in resources to that location through the Tuolumne County Automatic Aid Agreement,” Casci said. “Regarding the emergency response resources that responded to the fire, Columbia Fire District was unable to provide a fire engine response… All other emergency response resources that were dispatched to this fire responded.”
Just a year ago in early June, county voters overwhelmingly defeated a Measure V special tax applied to every parcel of real property — $150 per year in additional property tax for each developed parcel, $75 per year for undeveloped parcels — to go exclusively to local fire departments for fire services.
Measure V required two-thirds of all votes in favor to pass and it failed with 68% of county voters voting no.
Two weeks before the June 8 election day in 2021, Ferreira said if Measure V passed Columbia Fire Protection District would receive an estimated $28,650 in the first year from 217 taxable parcels within its boundaries.
“If the measure does not pass, I will continue to do business on approximately $87,000 a year,” Ferreira said in late May last year. “I will continue to be only able to afford to pay stipends to my firefighters, which currently we pay starting firefighters $100 a month stipend… before taxes.”
The Gookins would like to see action taken to restore responding fire personnel to Station 74.
“The volunteer fire department used to be able to respond,” Chris Gookin said Tuesday in downtown Sonora. “I love the volunteer fire department. We used to be part of it, and Louie responded to every fire that he could.”
“I want them to be able to keep people there, so at least one fire truck can respond the next time there’s a fire in that neighborhood,” she said. “I know they need more money for that. They need to find a way.”
“It’s unfortunate when it comes to public safety, we don’t have people lining up to work for next to nothing.”
—Mark Ferreira, chief of the Columbia Fire Protection District