On Aug. 22 the Lincoln County Commission announced that a petition to save the Cabinet View Fire Service Area failed to gain enough signatures.
Early this spring, a group of fire service area residents submitted a petition to dissolve the district and effectively close the Cabinet View Fire Department. On June 13 the Lincoln County commissioners passed a resolution to close the area within 60 days, unless board members could submit a petition signed by 50 percent of the residents in the effected area.
“This marks the end to a sad and contentious dispute regarding the CVFSA,” wrote the commissioners in a press release.
Issues between Lincoln County and the Cabinet View Fire Department were rooted in claims that the department was self-dispatching to emergencies in its area without proper state licenses to do so. Cabinet View firefighters believed that they could respond faster than their counterparts in Libby. But the county commissioners said the fire service area and the department established to serve it was created to fight structure fires only.
The dispute resulted in the Cabinet View Fire Service Area Board going to court and seeking a summary judgment earlier this year. On June 21, Lake County Judge C.B. McNeil ruled the fire department could only fight structure fires and ordered it to stop responding to other calls.
The fire service area was formally dissolved on Aug. 13.
The Libby Volunteer Fire Department and Libby Volunteer Ambulance will now be dispatched to all emergency calls in the Cabinet View area, along U.S. Highway 2 south of Libby, including fires. In the press release from Lincoln County it said the Libby department planned on staffing the nearby Whiskey Hill fire station.
“Lincoln County had no other options to address the serious problems created by CVFSA’s current leadership,” the commissioners concluded in the press release. “Based on the results of the (original) protest, the CVSFA community agreed with Lincoln County’s difficult decision.”