PINE CREEK STATION — More than 60 current and former Pine Creek employees attended the 30th anniversary of the Pine Creek station on Saturday. In the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument area, Pine Creek has provided advanced ambulance service to visitors since 1986.
Reunion attendees came from all over Washington and Oregon, as well from California, Montana, Arizona and Mississippi.
One by one, they took the microphone to share an anecdote or two about what their time at Pine Creek meant to them and how it helped shape who they are today.
They included battalion fire chiefs, fire department captains, a cardiovascular registered nurse, a county sheriff, a deputy sheriff, the regional director for the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife and over a dozen paramedic/fire fighters, to name a few.
Of the 90-plus men and women who have served at Pine Creek over the years, nearly 80 percent of them retain a position in the public service sector.
Attendees gave credit to Tom McDowell, assistant chief for North Country Emergency Medical Services, and his wife, Dianne McDowell, for shaping who they are today.
“Crossing paths with Tom and Dianne and the family they built with us changed all of us and led us down the path we’re on today,” Skamania County Sheriff Dave Brown said.
Past Pine Creek members talked about how Tom McDowell seemed to enter their lives at just the right time — when they were as young as 14, 15 or 16 — giving them greater responsibilities around the fire station as they aged and showed the fortitude to handle more.
“Tom brought me here,” David Massie, a police officer in Kalispell, Mont., said. “I had an interest in the medical field, and he encouraged us, at a young age, to get involved.”
Time and time again, the Pine Creek experience was described as a brotherhood.
Dave Garrison, who retired from the Air Force with 24 years of service, is an instructor pilot in Columbus, Miss., and came the farthest for the first-ever reunion. He worked for Pine Creek on the weekends from 1980 to 1984, before it had official funding.
“It turned kids into professionals is what it did,” Garrison said. “You had no choice but to grow up. I’ve been a lot of places in the world, and I’ve never found any place where a mentor takes kids to the level that Tom McDowell does,” Garrison said.
In 1986, a 24-hour staff of first responders was officially stationed at Pine Creek from July to September with some overlap in June, when training takes place each year. The Pine Creek station sits near the junction of forest roads 25 and 90 on the northeast side of Swift Reservoir.
All personnel must be either a certified paramedic or EMT. The majority of the crew are students who have successfully completed the EMT program that North Country EMS offers or work at the Yacolt Fire Station. Employees of neighboring fire departments also provide coverage on their days off.
“We receive closer to 30 calls per year that are actual hospital transports from tourists exploring the Ape Caves to people climbing Mount St. Helens and breaking their leg,” Tom McDowell said. “We’ve flown two out of Pine Creek (via Life Flight) already this year. It’s emergency medical service provided in a tourist wilderness area.”
At 23 years old, Leo Mercer has been working at Pine Creek since 2013 while juggling shifts at North Country EMS and the Yacolt Fire Department. He recounted a call from last year in which an elderly man had fallen 60 to 100 feet near the Middle Falls Campground. With the patient unable to move, Mercer and others on his team rappelled down, strapped him into a basket, provided aid on the 10 mile ride to the helicopter and loaded him in for transport.
“I’m almost done with (para)medic school, and there are a lot of people who start in town and don’t get rural experience,” Mercer said. “You have to actively do things to change what’s going to happen because it’s not just a 10 minute ride to the hospital.”
North Country EMS Chief Ben Peeler took over for Tom McDowell in 2011.
He kicked off the night with his own words of appreciation. He credited McDowell for fostering a spark in young people that sometimes only he could see, “and the evidence of his efforts are standing all around me,” Peeler said.
