Fire chief seeks support for Oklahoma Forestry Service

Heath Orabanec, retired fire chief for Sequoyah County Rural Fire Protection District #1, is asking for help.

Not help fighting fires, but help fighting Governor Kevin Stitt’s firing of Mark Goeller, the director of the Oklahoma Forestry Services, and the chief executive’s threat to abolish the state agency that are vital to rural fire departments.

Stitt terminated Goeller after the March wildfires, a decision that sparked outrage in the firefighting community and begged the question of whether the move was vindictive or based on actual performance. Stitt cited Goeller’s alleged mishandling of resources and the lack of deployment of available firefighters, which Stitt claimed contributed to the extent of the damage and loss of life. Further inflaming the situation, Stitt also suggested the Forestry Service could be disbanded, a bold proposal that drew the ire of legislators and a letter from dozens of business, industry and firefighter organizations imploring the governor to maintain the entity in its current form.

Stitt later backed down from his proposal, but Orabanec maintains that the fight is real and that efforts should be aggressively pursued to ensure the Forestry Service continues its 100-year existence.

“About a month ago, we had the big firestorms happening everywhere in western Oklahoma,” Orabanec told Sequoyah County Commissioners on Monday at their weekly meeting. “We didn’t have to deal with that too much here. But Forestry was assigned to that, and, whatever your position is with the governor, whichever way — you’re for him or not — right now he’s walking down a dangerous slope. He’s talking about trying to get rid of Forestry. That would hurt us tremendously as fire departments on this side of the state, and it would hurt those guys out there [in western Oklahoma]. They (Forestry) send strike teams out there every year.” Orabanec explained that Stitt has said he wants to put together a committee, “which basically is a bunch of folks that don’t represent us. There’s a bunch of folks in Oklahoma City — Tulsa Fire, Oklahoma City Fire, some local emergency managers and some people up there. We have no representation from this side of the state to have any kind of say.”

“Basically what they put together was the finding that we all knew for the last 10 years: There’s not enough money, there’s not enough firefighters, there’s not enough communications, there’s not a good solid plan on the state,” Orabanec said.

“It took them a month to come up with that. April 17th, they submitted that report to the governor. The governor said that he’ll look at creating subcommittees and try to address this stuff. That was not Mark Goeller, the head of Forestry’s problem. [Stitt] unnecessarily removed him (Goeller), that’s just my position,” Orabanec said. “But he’s talking about wanting to dismantle or do some kind of other project and lose the Forestry.

“I know just about anybody in here that’s lived in Sequoyah County for any amount of time, Forestry has does something for you or your neighbor at some point,” Orabanec said. “I ask that you guys help support them in any way and stand up. Let’s keep Forestry. We need them. The rural fire departments need them.

“ There’s been talk about, ‘Hey, let’s take that money away and let’s give it to the fire departments.’ That doesn’t fix it. We can’t store bulldozers and have equipment available like what forestry does for us. We don’t have people that are trained. There’s folks that can run a dozer, but there’s not folks that can run a dozer in those situations or do what those people do.

“If anybody knows anybody, reach out to the congressmen, to the representatives,” Orabanec pleaded. “I’ve talked to a bunch of them, I’ve been to Oklahoma City three times over this in the last two weeks trying to talk to some folks and get something going.

“We can’t lose Forestry. He (Stitt) has a bull’s eye on them for some reason.”

Orabanec explained that the Forestry Service had part of its resources staged in southeast Oklahoma during the time that the wildfires were scorching western Oklahoma, which he said is normal.

“You see him (Stitt) every time he has a press conference wanting to know how come all those resources weren’t out west. Well, any kind of emergency situation responder knows you don’t put all your eggs in one basket, in one location. That could have very easily touched off and we could have had problems in southeast Oklahoma or here on our side of the state,” Orabanec said. “It’s kind of an odd occasion for the whole state to be in such a state that it was for that event.

“I just ask if anybody can reach out, talk to anybody that you may know, show support for the Forestry Service. Fire departments need them, and there’s a lot of fire departments across the state that don’t have what we have, the county sales tax. Forestry gives them close to $10,000 a year in operational grants, all of us. And that money is what some of those departments in southeast Oklahoma operate on. That’s their fuel, their maintenance, that’s their everything budget. That goes away, those departments are going to go away. And as it is, we have few enough firefighters anymore. People just don’t want to volunteer that time to make that commitment,” Orabanec said.

“In the last three years, this county and the departments here have done probably as much training as a paid department does in five years. Our departments here are pretty good, pretty solid. But we still need that backing of the Oklahoma Forestry Service, to be able to get out here and help us when we have difficulties.”

Other business

In other business, the county commissioners declared as surplus: From the Sequoyah County Sheriff ’s Office:

• 2016 Chevrolet Tahoe to be donated to Spiro Police Department

• Two 2023 Chevrolet Silverados to be sold to the District Attorney’s Office for the agreed price of $25,000 each

• 2019 Dodge truck to be donated to Sequoyah County 911 From Sequoyah County Emergency Management:

• Truck vault for a Dodge Durango to be donated to the District Attorney’s Office From Sequoyah County Court Clerk’s Office:

• Wooden desk, wooden file cabinet and wooden bookcase to be donated to Mental Health Court The county commissioners also approved the transfer of appropriations within the Sheriff ’s Assistance grant account in the amount of $52,889.42, moving the funds into a maintenance and operations (M&O) account so that the money can be used to pay for fuel for the next two months.

The commissioners also approved the appointment of Amos Stewart to the Sequoyah County Fair Board District 2.