The small, unincorporated town of Santa Margarita has one of the last volunteer fire stations in San Luis Obispo County. It’s an important training ground for local firefighters, but it’s also facing challenges like storm damage and low funding.
On a warm summer evening, firefighters flood into Santa Margarita’s fire station on El Camino Real. As the training begins, the volunteer firefighters run through an updated version of their incident reports: documents they take to every emergency call to describe the incident in detail.
They're sitting in rolling chairs against a freshly-plastered wall.
Fire Chief Robert Murach said they had to take down some of their walls after this year’s heavy storms. A nearby creek overflowed, bringing about 6 inches of water into their station, leaving mold in the walls.
“The water just backed up because the drain at the end of the street here just couldn't send water anywhere. Once it came over the top of the tracks we were doomed,” he said.
Murach said the station stayed open during the flooding, and no one was hurt.
Volunteer firefighters were scooping out buckets of water from the station while still going on calls, and community members came by to help.
“All the volunteers showed up, and we had a few people from the community came by. We set up some sandbags and stuff to try to divert it, but there was just too much water,” Murach said.
It was tough, but he said now they’re on their way to recovery after receiving federal disaster assistance.
“We just recently got permission from FEMA to rebuild it after the flood. So we now have permission to put the walls back together,” Murach said.
Because it’s made of volunteers, the Santa Margarita station’s budget is low compared to fully-staffed stations, according to local fire specialists — about $100,000 a year.
A 2018 report presented to the Board of Supervisors looked into the future of SLO County’s special fire districts, including Santa Margarita. It said the future of their volunteer fire service is unclear — and low funding is a big part of that.
Debbie Arnold represents the area on the SLO County Board of Supervisors, and she’s also the Executive Board President for the SLO Fire Safe Council.
“The standards of firefighting have changed so much that it takes a lot of money. You have to have all kinds of expensive equipment, all kinds of expensive training,” Arnold said.
Arnold said it’s possible the station could dissolve if it isn’t able to sufficiently help its community with the funding it has now.
She said one way to prevent that from happening would be for Santa Margarita residents to vote for higher property taxes to help fund the station.
“Their town population is so small that you would have to put a pretty hefty tax increase on the property owners there,” Arnold said.
Representatives from the SLO Fire Safe Council said a fully staffed station in Santa Margarita would cost the County about two-million dollars. Since the town has a population of about 1,000 people, taxing property owners there for that funding could cost them thousands of dollars each year. Arnold said she doesn’t expect residents will vote for that.
But, she said it’s possible a new CalFire station could be built in the town, on a lot donated to the county by a developer. But local fire experts said that would also cost about $2 million dollars — and several years — to build.
The future of Santa Margarita’s fire services may be unclear, but for now, the volunteer station continues to be a place of inspiration and training for a new generation of local firefighters. People like Jadeon Suval, who’s been volunteering here for about two years now. He's learned skills here that he’s now putting to use in a new job.
“I was working at Fatty's Pizza as a manager for years out of high school, and now I just got a job at the forest service on a fire engine,” Suval said.
Suval said he wouldn’t have fallen in love with firefighting if it weren’t for his training and experiences at this station.
“100 percent, if I didn't do this then I probably would never be where I'm at, at all,” Suval said.
Santa Margarita’s volunteer firefighters train every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month. Anyone interested in volunteering can visit the station’s website for details.
