Bothell force disbands, mayor declares Sept. 1 Volunteer Firefighter Appreciation Day

A firefighter/inspector with the Bothell Fire Marshall’s office, Doug Werts said there have been a few changes over the years within the city’s fire department.

For example, Public Information Officer Lisa Allen said the original all-volunteer department was started in 1908 after a couple of large fires. The city’s big purchase for the new department was 50 water buckets.

Werts said the city later added a two-gallon soda/acid fire extinguisher to augment the buckets. The city’s first fire vehicle was a horse-drawn wagon on a Model T chassis. A more modern vehicle arrived with the purchase of a 1928 Model A fire engine.

Not incidentally, the city apparently did not purchase that vehicle. Initially serving Bothell along with what is now Kenmore and Woodinville, the city’s volunteer firefighters raised money for the truck and other equipment through various fund-raisers.

Mostly for financial reasons, after just over 100 years, the city was forced to disband its volunteer fire force over the summer. On Sept. 1, Mayor Mark Lamb declared the day Volunteer Firefighter Appreciation Day in Bothell with a proclamation read during City Council’s meeting that evening.

Invited by the city, about 50 or so former volunteer firefighters and their families first packed council’s chambers to listen to and receive copies of the city proclamation, then headed to the downtown fire station for a gathering with their peers from over the many years the volunteer department was in operation.

Residents who have attended any civic events in Bothell, such as the recent RiverFest, have probably seen the historic fire truck the city has restored and routinely displays. At the recent volunteer gathering, Wally Wickland, 87, was the first of several to say he had driven and ridden in the truck many times on the way to one emergency or another.

“It was a cold ride sometimes,” he said. “It would wake you up in the middle of the night.”

Wickland also was the first of many to comment on the camaraderie and friendships that developed in the volunteer department. Wickland and others talked about regular spaghetti dinners, dances, “water ball” contests at Pop Keeney Field and, perhaps most importantly, the regular Monday night drills and training sessions that were a staple of the department for many years.

“We learned a lot, but we always had a lot of fun, too,” volunteer John DeYoung, 59, said of the Monday sessions.

(As an aside, judging from pictures of one event, “water ball” consisted of trying to keep a large ball afloat on the stream from fire hoses.)

DeYoung said that originally volunteers were alerted to emergencies by a siren sounding at the fire station, presumably the station that now serves as Bothell City Hall. Later, volunteers were given radio pagers that would sound in their homes. Pocket pagers eventually replaced those.

“The tone would sound and you would go,” DeYoung said. “It could be 2 a.m. in the morning or whatever.”

Former volunteer and one-time fire chief John Keener, 76, said the city didn’t actually buy its first fire vehicle until about 1955. By the way, Keener joined the department in 1949 when he was still in high school and didn’t retire until 1963. He said he remembers responding to plenty of brush fires and also recalled a young girl, presumably an infant, almost drowning in a five-gallon buck of water.

While they received Red Cross first-aid training, volunteer Paul Bergren, 89, said there were no medics in those days and volunteers rushed the girl to the nearest hospital. She survived.

By the way, probably the biggest fire mentioned in the midst of all the reminiscing was a blaze that Werts said destroyed 10 downtown Bothell businesses on Easter Sunday in 1911.

Other visitors to the volunteer party included the family of long-time volunteer chief Vic Shellito. Shellito spent 34 years in the department, 13 as chief. Shellito died in 2000, but his daughter and grandchildren were in the crowd Sept. 1 with a scrapbook of news clippings and memorabilia.

“They were a tight-knit group,” retired professional firefighter Al Anderson, 64, said of the volunteers. Anderson started with the department in the days when the volunteers still dominated.

“They weren’t necessarily accepting of the paid guys,” Anderson said, though judging from the joking he was doing with the former volunteers there are no lasting hard feelings.

Speaking at the council meeting that evening, Bothell’s Interim Fire Chief Rudy Alvarado said the respect firefighters receive here and elsewhere is due largely to the service of early volunteers.

“I think our reputations as firefighters is owed to them,” he said.