Valentine’s Day fire, death not black and white

The source of the call matters in Camas and Washougal, where city leaders say a “high percentage” of alarm-generated calls turn out to be false alarms. That’s why, instead of sending eight or more firefighters — standard for 911 calls to residential fires — CWFD typically dispatches one engine with two firefighters to house alarms.

“In the past, we’ve considered these types of calls not necessarily a fire … usually a false alarm,” Camas City Administrator Pete Capell said of the fire department’s response to alarm-generated calls.

But no one publicly complained about the practice until after the Valentine’s Day fire.

Adam Brice, president of East Clark Professional Fire Fighters, the local firefighters’ union, said the Feb. 14 fire put firefighters into a dangerous situation.

Firefighters who arrive at a residential fire with only two responders, one engine and back-up possibly 10 or 15 minutes away, “have not been provided with resources that make it possible to legally enter and extinguish a burning building when the first engine arrives on scene,” Brice said.

The union president, on behalf of the firefighters, filed a formal complaint with the Washington Department of Labor and Industries in late February, less than two weeks after the fire at Nichols’ home.

According to the union’s complaint, the local fire department has “substandard minimum apparatus staffing levels” that have created an unsafe working environment.

“There is a daily threat to the working firefighters that they will be forced to face hazards and perform in hazardous environments,” Brice stated in the complaint.

Since filing the complaint, Brice — along with Nagode, dozens of firefighters and concerned community members — has come to Camas council meetings, urging city leaders to find funding and increase the number of first responders on each engine.

“Right now, every day, we don’t have enough firefighters to do the job in a manner citizens deserve,” Brice told Camas City Council members at their April 2 meeting. “On Feb. 14, our firefighters went above and beyond. How different could that day and the aftermath been, had they had the appropriate resources? Now is time to make sure citizens of Camas and Washougal have the firefighters that they need.”

Although Nichols suffered from a degenerative muscle disease, which caused his head to sag toward his shoulder, and had very recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer, Nagode said she was not uncomfortable leaving her partner at home by himself. Before she left for work that day, Nagode said, she prepared some soup for Nichols and her “love” gave his usual, funny, goodbye when she left.

“He always told me, ‘Don’t let the bastards get you down,'” Nagode said, smiling at the memory. “That was the last thing he said to me.”

Nagode had already been through a massive loss a few years earlier, when her severely disabled adult son, Josh, died in hospice care. She knew that Nichols, who had been by her side when Josh was dying, had created a living will. Nichols, Nagode said, did not want to go through some of the things he’d witnessed during Josh’s final days.

“No ventilator. No tube feeding,” Nagode said of Nichols’ wishes for end-of-life care.

Medical professionals told her that, without the ventilator, Nichols would likely die right away.

“But Art had different plans,” Nagode said.

When doctors removed his ventilator, Nichols surprised everyone by breathing on his own and trying to talk, Nagode said.

The fire happened on a Wednesday. By Saturday, Nagode said Nichols had been transferred from the emergency room to a burn unit to the hospice center in Vancouver. Once there, Nagode said, Nichols slipped into a deep sleep and never really regained consciousness.

The nurse-practitioner listed “malignant neoplasm of prostate” as the cause of Nichols’ death, with “secondary malignant neoplasm of bone; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; (and) chronic atrial fibrillation” listed as contributing factors. Nichols’ cause of death is listed as “natural,” not accidental. White did not refer the case to a medical examiner or coroner for an autopsy, and Nichols’ body was cremated shortly after his death.

City makes initial change, looks toward funding sources

The city has changed its procedure for house alarm-generated calls and brought battalion chiefs back into the mix.

“We’ve changed our policy, so there will be at least three people with the battalion chief responding as well as the two-person (fire engine crew),” Capell told The Post-Record in late March.

In early April, CWFD Chief Nick Swinhart, who has long advocated for an increase in staffing levels at the local fire department, presented city council members and Camas Mayor Scott Higgins, with cost estimates of hiring more firefighters and meeting the public’s demands for at least three, if not four, responders on every call for service coming in to CWFD stations.

Swinhart said four-person engine companies are more typical in larger metropolitan areas like Portland, and that even nearby Vancouver, which has roughly four times the population base of Camas-Washougal, “employs three-person engine staffing.”

To ensure three people on each engine at all three of Camas’ fire stations would require the city to add an additional 12 to 15 full-time responders at a cost of about $1.3 million per year in additional salary and benefit costs, plus any additional equipment required for the new firefighters.

One possible option for providing the level of service firefighters and their union president have been calling for is to form some type of taxing district, like a regional fire authority, which could gain voter support for staffing increases and pass property tax levies.

Swinhart said in April that he would like to see city and fire leaders discuss these issues at CWFD Joint Policy Advisory Committee (JPAC) meetings, where the cities of Camas and Washougal are equally represented.

‘We had more time together’

More than two months after losing her longtime partner and being displaced from the home they shared, Nagode is still trying to piece her life back together.

Knowing that the death certificate disputes what she believes to be a clear fact — that the smoke Nichols breathed in while waiting for firefighters to extract him from his burning home on Valentine’s Day contributed to his death — weighs on Nagode.

“He had black sludge coming out of his lungs,” Nagode said. “His mustache was black from the smoke, and he had black around his nose. He was there (at the hospice center) because of smoke inhalation, not because of cancer.”

Nagode said she is fighting to get the death certificate changed.

“We had more time together, that’s what is so frustrating,” a distraught Nagode said this week. “He had cancer, yes. But he had time. When he got his diagnosis, they told him he had time … maybe six months. We were making plans. I wanted him to have the (home death) he wanted. The fire changed that.”