The Board of Supervisors Tuesday authorized the Riverside County Fire Department to finalize aid agreements with the city of Canyon Lake and March Air Reserve Base, making county fire personnel available to one or the other, and the partners’ first responders available to the county.
The “automatic aid agreement” with Canyon Lake was approved just as the gated municipality prepares on Jan. 1 to switch to a stand-alone fire department, after decades of contracting with the county, with one extended pause in the relationship.
Under the agreement, county firefighters will be available to automatically respond to the city in the event of an emergency that the single engine crew in Canyon Lake cannot handle. Similarly, Canyon Lake’s crew will be available to the county for fire mitigation and control, as well as other emergencies, when the county is in need of assistance near the city.
According to the compact, Canyon Lake must maintain a 24/7 minimum service level of three firefighters staffing the city’s engine at the municipality’s lone firehouse for the agreement to remain in effect.
Canyon Lake is the only city in Riverside County to cancel fire services over the last decade. It shuttered its firehouse on July 1, 2015, after the city and county became embroiled in legal wrangling over nearly $2 million in unpaid fire services bills, which Canyon Lake representatives at the time blamed on increased firefighter staffing that the city did not want and could not afford.
The result was a breach of contract lawsuit in which the county alleged that, beginning in the last half of the 2013-14 fiscal year, Canyon Lake stopped making payments under the fire protection contract that went into effect on July 1, 2011.
The suit was resolved in the fall of 2015, when Canyon Lake agreed to reimburse the county $1.7 million. However, the Canyon Lake City Council kept the local fire station closed while examining the prospects of establishing a city-run fire department.
Between July 2015 and May 2017, the city paid for fire protection on an as-needed basis, with county fire trucks from Lake Elsinore and Menifee responding to 911 calls in Canyon Lake. The city, through the offices of Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, eventually reached a compromise agreement with the county to reopen the fire station in June 2017.
The “mutual aid agreement” with March Air Reserve Base is a continuation of a long series of aid agreements between the base and the county. The last one was signed in 2013 and expired this year.
Under the new one, county firefighters will be available to respond to “emergency fire and emergency medical or rescue incidents within the boundaries of March ARB,” according to documents posted to the board’s agenda.
“In some circumstances, the base will respond to emergency incidents within the boundaries of the county,” documents stated.
The most recent high-level mutual aid coordination occurred in May 2019, when a National Guard F-16 suffered a hydraulic failure while landing at the base and crashed the roof of a warehouse adjacent to Interstate 215.
March ARB crews and county firefighters, along with personnel from other agencies, worked together over a week to secure the site and remove the jet.
The mutual aid agreement will be in effect for five years, officials said.