Last Friday, WPEA was invited to participate in a tour and discussion with US Senator Patty Murray at the Fire Training Academy in North Bend, WA. At the meeting, there were leaders from the Department of Natural Resources and Washington State Patrol, including Commissioner of Public Lands Dave Upthegrove, State Fire Marshal Chad Cross, and Congresswoman Kim Schrier. We toured the Academy to learn how firefighters and workers across Washington receive their training and certifications, and deploy across the state to fight fire. In this tour group, we also had WPEA member and Deputy State Fire Marshal, Courtney Chambers, in attendance!
In these discussions, Senator Murray was looking for more ways to support the Firefighters and workers on the ground, after a particularly bad fire season for the State. In her role as Vice Chair of the Appropriations committee, Sen. Murray is in a position to advocate for financial support for wildfire and natural resources programs at the Federal level that can significantly impact the resources available to our membership.
Our members of both DNR and WSP are actively on the ground, working as firefighters, operations managers, helitack crews, and more. We appreciated the opportunity to continue advocating for additional resources that help our members do the important and dangerous work of keeping Washington safe.
