City gets firefighting agreement with BLM

The federal Bureau of Land Management, which has an agreement to operate on United States Bureau of Reclamation land, has entered into an agreement with the city of Grand Coulee.

The agreement allows Grand Coulee firefighters to take care of fires on land the BLM is responsible for, and the city can in turn bill the BLM, as well as use resources from them, such as fire-fighting aircraft.

“It’s a one-way deal,” said Grand Coulee Fire Chief Rick Paris, referring to the city benefitting from the partnership, but not losing anything from it.

Curb at church coming out

The Grand Coulee City Council agreed at their July 17 council meeting to remove a curb at the Zion Lutheran Church. The curb is in the way for those who want to park in front of the building, where handicapped-accessible parking spots are located. Some cars bottom out on the curb when parking there.

Grant-purchased equipment helps sheriff’s office

The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office used both an offroad vehicle and a boat purchased with grant money in recent incidents.

One such incident involved a 75-year-old man who was injured outside of Odessa. An offroad vehicle, referred to as Gator One, was used to find him and transport him back to safety. Gators are a vehicle made by John Deere.

A 21-foot safe boat referred to as Marine One was used to apprehend people alleged to have caused the 3,000-acre Rattlesnake Fire by lighting fireworks from their boat.

“Both of these valuable pieces of equipment were grant purchased and not paid for directly out of local current expense dollars,” said Sheriff Wade Magers. “Both are needed emergency response vehicles that have special use deployment needs and have paid off in back-to-back weeks. We should also mention the F250 crew cab pickup that pulls Marine One and Gator One is also purchased from a grant award.”

The vehicles were paid for from a variety of federal and state grants for which Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office had applied.