Then in the 80s the southern end of the county became an exurban haven for people fleeing the liberal hellhole of Spokane. Now the county is around 50K and seems like 60% suburban warriors with pavement princess King Ranch F350s who can’t go to the grocery store without at least a Glock 3/
Like other formerly rural places which a) have grown fast, b) need to upgrade their services, and c) are full of new people who moved there specifically to avoid taxes, Stevens County has some serious growing pains 4/
Rural fire and EMS have long depended on volunteers. Basically, rural areas don’t have enough people to provide the property tax revenue to support paid employees at their fire department, and the 911 call volume isn’t enough to make much money, so it’s volunteers or nothing 5/
Three problems with this: 1) service levels under volunteers have never been great. There’s only so much you can expect from people who are working for free: timely, lifesaving, technically proficient emergency assistance is usually not one of those things. 6/
2) you might be able to convince someone to volunteer to carry a hose and do CPR, but if they have paramedic certification, and the student loans that come along with the certification process, they need a salary. So rural EMS agencies with no $ are mostly volunteer EMTs with limited training. 7/
There’s nuance but basically paramedics can give you meds you haven’t been prescribed, and EMTs can’t. If I have a stroke I want a paramedic, but if it’s an EMT the hospital is 5 minutes away so my chances are still OK. But if I’m out in the woods? I want a paramedic, which the local FD can’t afford
3) Boredom helps volunteerism. Rural towns in olden timey days had grange halls and union halls and American Legion halls and Lions Club halls and this kind of hall and that kind of hall, plus churches and dances etc., because otherwise people would be bored out of their mind 9/
One thing you could do was volunteer at the fire department. Most of the time you would hang out with the fellas, and maybe get a 911 call or two. But fire department volunteerism has gone through the floor (like other kinds of volunteerism) because people nowadays are looking at their phones 10/
Good vid here talking about this stuff 11/ www.youtube.com/watch?v=eds_...
So here’s Stevens County with a bunch of EMS providers trying to provide services with little/no revenue, making it (kind of) work with a volunteer model that is collapsing, and with county commissioners and voters who don’t want to fund things but want the things anyway 12/
And the locals won't volunteer b/c they're too busy getting led around by Youtube and Facebook and Fox etc. etc. so the free labor that makes their low-tax system work is getting dried up by the same partisanship that attracted them to Stevens County in the first place 13/