PORT ANGELES — Sam Phillips is putting down the hose after spending two-thirds of his life fighting fires.
The Clallam Fire District No. 2 chief will retire June 30 after 42 years answering emergency calls and supervising those who do, he announced this week.
The three fire commissioners named Deputy Fire Chief Jake Patterson, a former Port Angeles Fire Department lieutenant, as Phillips’ successor Tuesday following an executive session. Patterson will earn $108,000 annually.
Sam Phillips
Patterson, hired in 2016, lives in Fire District No. 3 and can be the District 2 chief by living within 20 minutes of the fire District’s eastern boundary at Deer Park Road.
Phillips, 60, has headed the department since 2012, a period during which it went from an all-volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician force to a department with six career firefighter-paramedics serving 9,500 addresses.
Phillips first came to Port Angeles from Salem, Ore., in 2011, hired as the assistant chief of operations before succeeding the retiring John Bugher the following year.
The fire district covers 85 square miles, from East Beach Road at Lake Crescent to Deer Park Road east of Port Angeles, not including the city itself.
The native of Redding, Calif., started in his hometown as a volunteer in 1976, later serving on the Roseburg, Ore., Fire Department for 23 years before opening a regional training center for Marion County, Ore., Fire District No. 1, where he worked from 2001-05.
Phillips was a training chief and deputy chief of the Hillsboro, Ore., Fire Department in Oregon before he retired, moving to Salem, Ore., when he was hired by Fire District No. 2.
He is past president of the Oregon Fire Instructors Association and a life member of the organization, rounding out a vocation he has aspired to since high school.
“I wanted to be a fish and game warden, and my high school counselor said there’s no future in that, you need to look somewhere else,” Phillips said.
“My friends were all taking introduction fire science in high school, and I decided to hang out with my friends in that class.
“I kind of got hooked on it.
“No two calls are exactly the same, and it requires you to think critically and make decisions in a short time span.”
Phillips said he and his wife, Jennifer, will be leaving Port Angeles following his retirement and will return to Salem to care for Jennifer’s father.
They arrived in Port Angeles at the cusp of growth in emergency calls.
Fire and medical response calls grew from 979 in 2011 to 1,774 in 2018, skyrocketing 81 percent.
And all the district firefighters were volunteers.
“The volunteer workforce was getting burned out,” Phillips said.
He counts the department’s response to the increase in emergency calls as among the highlights of his tenure, which included the introduction of a staff of paid career firefighters to the tiny staff of three.
The district received a $422,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2012 to hire four firefighter-paramedics and began 24-hour coverage with career staffing.
In a second attempt at passing the first levy lid lift in 30 years, voters approved a property tax increase from 68 cents per $1,000 of valuation to $1.05 per $1,000 of valuation that helped to more permanently fund the positions.
The cost per $1,000 has since gone down to 91 cents, Phillips said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
