QUILCENE — The state Department of Transportation offered to reimburse the Quilcene Fire District for the $52 fine it paid for bypassing a toll booth during an emergency run last September.
But it was too late.
“I told them it had already been taken care of,” said Fire Chief Robert Low.
An incensed private citizen gave the district a check for the ticket, and KOMO-TV commentator Ken Schram is sending $104 for the next two times, Low said.
It’s all part of the fallout from a KOMO story Tuesday night about a fire district driver’s decision to speed through a toll booth at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to deliver a patient in life-threatening respiratory distress to Tacoma General Hospital.
The patient is fine, but the automated photo-toll system at the bridge automatically took a picture of the license plate and automatically sent a fine notice to the Quilcene department two weeks later.
The district called the Pierce County court number on the ticket to protest the fine but was told it would have to go to court, Low said.
Transportation officials said they would have waived the fine, but no one at the fire district knew to call them, Low said.
The resulting kerfuffle has turned into a perfect publicity storm, to hear Low describe it.
Hundreds of e-mails and calls flooded in to Transportation, he was told on a conference call with officials there the day after the story was broadcast.
What looks like a big flaw in the state system for tolls — which by law may not be charged to emergency vehicles on emergency runs — is about to be fixed anyway, said Transportation spokeswoman Patty Michaud.
With the new 520 bridge toll due to start in the spring to help replace the earthquake-vulnerable bridge across Lake Washington, Transportation will take over photo-tolling, and violators will have 80 days to protest or pay the fine.
“It’s a way better process,” said Michaud, who noted that until the Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened a few years ago, the state hadn’t been in the toll business for decades since the last tolls came off the Hood Canal Bridge.
Most police and fire agencies that use the Narrows bridge have transponder stickers on their windshields. Trips are automatically logged and owners billed for use, Michaud said.
When emergency departments get a bill, they mark emergency incidents and are credited on the next bill.
But little Quilcene doesn’t use the bridge that often, maybe twice a year, said Low, and doesn’t have a transponder.
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Julie McCormick is a freelance writer and photographer living in Port Townsend. Phone her at 360-385-4645 or e-mail juliemccormick10@gmail.com.
KOMO is a Seattle news partner of the Peninsula Daily News.
