Sierra City Fire Engine Fundraiser Closes In on $85,000

SIERRA CITY — A fundraiser that set out to collect $25,000 for a new Sierra City fire engine is closing in on $85,000. Donors are within reach of a second matching challenge, and the committee behind the effort has set a new target of $100,000 by September 19, when the campaign ends.

The campaign, called Prospecting for Protection, paired its original goal with a dollar-for-dollar pledge from an anonymous local donor that would have brought the total to $50,000. “The community had other plans,” Sonya Meline wrote on behalf of the campaign committee. Donors passed the mark quickly, and organizers reset the target to $75,000, then to $100,000.

The latest challenge came July 22, when Jim Westfall and Rosa Nevarez-Westfall pledged $10,000 through the Sierra City Improvement Group to be matched dollar for dollar by community donations. Sarah West-Kubly, who is helping lead the campaign, said Tuesday that donors were already close to completing the match.

“It is our privilege for the Sierra City Improvement Group to contribute $10,000 in support of our community and to see that gift matched, doubling its impact,” Westfall and Nevarez-Westfall wrote in a statement. “Knowing that every dollar remains here in our community makes this opportunity even more meaningful.”

The campaign has outrun its own scoreboard. Organizers began by “filling our boot,” a single boot on a sign in town that tracked progress toward the first goal. A second boot was added as the target rose, and the sign has now been replaced with one showing two full boots and a fire helmet marking $100,000. Eric Kubly, deputy chief of the volunteer fire department, handled the design. “One of our committee members joked that every time we stop to take a photo of the fundraising sign, it’s already out of date because the total has gone up again,” Meline wrote.

Volunteers have organized direct mail appeals, local businesses have spread word of the campaign, and a first community bingo night raised $376 for the engine. Meline said donations have come from longtime residents, second homeowners, visitors, and people with deep roots in Sierra City.

Some gifts have arrived as tributes. Earl Withycombe donated in memory of Rich Nourse, a friend and fellow firefighter, West-Kubly said. The two helped modernize the Sierra City Volunteer Fire Department around 1975 and helped it procure its first real fire engine, she said. Nourse served as assistant chief, became Chief 79 after his predecessor retired, and spent many years as treasurer of the Sierra City Fire Protection District.

The department now counts just 14 active volunteer firefighters, having dropped to roughly half the size it was twenty years ago, West-Kubly said. Meline said the firefighters who remain need equipment that lets fewer people accomplish more, and the committee chose the engine because it is built for the steep, narrow mountain roads volunteers drive every time they respond.

The department’s current engine is heavy enough to require a Class A license endorsement, and few remaining volunteers are licensed and insured to drive it. The proposed replacement, a Type 3/6 QTAC Super 3 built on a Ford F-550 chassis by QTAC Fire and Rescue Apparatus of Chico, would carry the same amount of water while weighing significantly less.

The engine is expected to cost just under $420,000. The Sierra City Fire Protection District procures apparatus for the department, and the money raised, along with the planned sale of the current engine, is meant to reduce what the district would need to pay or finance.

Tax-deductible donations can be made to the Sierra City Fire Department Auxiliary and mailed to PO Box 55, Sierra City, CA 96125. Donations can also be dropped off with Larry Breed at the Sierra Country Store or made online through Zeffy.