Nile-Cliffdell Fire & Rescue Dist #14

09/03/2026

Help us wish this a very happy Birthday. Lt. Woodall, you make us better. Your willingness to teach and mentor create a safer commmnity. Keep charging, keep swinging the axe. Thank you, sir and Happy Birthday!

09/03/2026

Great Day Swiftwater Rescue Training today! Today was the first multiagency Yakima County Technical Rescue Team training day. the joined City of Yakima Fire Department and our federal brothers from Yakima Training Center Fire. As many of you know this has been a long-time coming and today marked the first of many more multiagency trainings. Different Patches; One Mission.

We took full advantage of the Tieton "Flip-Flop" and got the crew out for practice oaring and paddling river rescue rafts on whitewater, doing "victim" rescues and even a pinned boat evolution. A pinned boat is when a boat becomes lodged against an object, fills with water and then becomes "pinned" due to the the current and water forces applied. This makes for a trickier rescue involving ropes, pulleys and lots of mechanical advantage.

Training like this on our region's whitewater rivers has no substitute. Things move faster, weather and water flows are variable, the consequences higher. This sort of training prepares us all for true, "real world" rescues.

Thanks NRS and Rescue Source , Rescue 3 International for all the help making this vision of a Unified Yakima County Team begin to form and take shape.

Strong work, YFD, YTC and Nile.

08/27/2026

Help us wish this Fighting 410 a happy birthday. Firefighter/EMT McArthur has been with our department for nearly 5 years. As a structural and wildland firefighter, EMT and Swift Water Rescue Technician, firefighter McArthur splits his time between Nile, Cliffdell Fire, and Lake Wenatchee Fire.

Happy birthday Colby enjoy the day to the fullest

08/23/2026

Help us wish this Fighting 410 a happy birthday! Firefighter Gapp (aka The Grinder) is always the first to volunteer for all those “extra duties” around the station. He always shows up humble and eager to learn. He always brings his great sense of humor to the team.

Happy Birthday Vern!

08/23/2026

Road closure alert!

🚧Construction for replacing the Little Rattlesnake Bridge on Forest Service Road 1500/Bethel Ridge Road near milepost 1.18 is scheduled for Tuesday August 25, 2026. The existing bridge has aged over the years and is being updated with a newer structure. Closures at the site will occur while stagging construction materials and reopen intermittently. Please plan accordingly for potential delays if you are traveling within the area.

08/18/2026

COMMUNITY UPDATE — LOWER NILE / RATTLESNAKE BRIDGE EMERGENCY EGRESS

As many of you know, the Rattlesnake Bridge washed out on December 10, 2025. While engineering for the permanent replacement is scheduled to begin this winter, with hopeful completion sometime in 2027 or early 2028, there is an immediate concern that I felt we could not simply wait to address.

As your Fire Chief, my number one responsibility is the preservation of life, safety, and property for everyone who lives in or visits our fire district.

With wildfire season upon us, one concern has continued to weigh heavily on me: evacuation and emergency egress from the Nile Valley.

The Lower Nile (Rattlesnake)Bridge represents a critical secondary egress route for our community. If the Upper Nile Bridge or the Highway 410 corridor were to become impassable because of wildfire, an accident, infrastructure failure, or another emergency, our options for moving people safely out of the valley become extremely limited.

Because of that concern, I reached out to Yakima County Commissioner Amanda McKinney and asked for help.

I told her, essentially, “I understand that we can’t magically make a new bridge happen overnight. But we need to make sure we have a plan that can be rapidly executed and provides for the safety and survivability of this valley.”

Without batting an eye, Commissioner McKinney responded:

“I appreciate your concern for your community. I understand why this is a concern for you. Let me get to work.”

And she did.

Commissioner McKinney brought together Yakima County Roads, the Yakima Valley Office of Emergency Management, OEM Director Tony Miller, the Fire District, and her office for a meeting specifically focused on this issue.

During that meeting, I was given the opportunity to explain our concerns from the fire and emergency-response perspective. Everyone at that table listened. They understood the problem. More importantly, they immediately became engaged in finding a solution.

Together, we began sketching out how an emergency evacuation using Lower Nile Road could work if our normal routes out of the valley were compromised.

Beginning tomorrow, that planning starts becoming reality.

Residents will begin seeing work around the Lower Nile/Rattlesnake Bridge to establish an emergency egress route that could be utilized during a bona fide community emergency.

I want to be very clear about what this means.

The bridge is NOT reopening to normal vehicle traffic.

The route will remain gated, locked, and closed to public vehicular traffic. Access will be controlled and available to emergency personnel for use during a legitimate community emergency requiring evacuation or emergency access.

The county has committed to making the route passable for this emergency purpose and maintaining that capability until construction of the permanent bridge begins.

So, as you see equipment and work occurring around the bridge over the coming days and weeks, please understand that this is not construction or repair of the permanent bridge.

What you are seeing is something equally important in the short term:

Your county, emergency management, fire district, and elected officials working together to make sure our community has another way out when it matters most.

There is still work to be done, and hopefully we never have to use this emergency route. But emergency preparedness is about solving problems before the smoke is in the air and before people need to evacuate.

I want to personally thank Amanda McKinney ,, Yakima County Roads and Public Works , Director Tony Miller and the Yakima Valley Emergency Management, and everyone involved in turning a concern into an actionable plan.

When I brought this issue forward, nobody dismissed it. Nobody said, “That’s years away.” Instead, the response was, “What can we do now?”

That is exactly the kind of partnership rural communities like ours depend upon.

On behalf of Nile-Cliffdell Fire & Rescue and the people we serve — thank you.

Stay safe,

Chief Ryan Clark
Yakima County Fire District #14
Nile-Cliffdell Fire & Rescue
The Fighting 410s

08/17/2026

Help us wish this a very happy birthday. Deputy Chief Kevin Paxton has been "effectively communicating" and keeping this community safe for some time.

DC Pax, as we all call him is everyone's "brother". He is a rock of this department. He is a friend. He is a Leader. He is my (our) Brother.

Pax - my brother, Happy Birthday from the rest of the Fighting 410s and all the "mountain kin-folk". We love you brother.

08/11/2026

Chief's Bugle - 11, August 2026

🌊 YAKIMA COUNTY SWIFTWATER RESCUE TECHNICIAN SCHOOL 2026 🌊

This past week marked an important milestone for emergency response in Yakima County.

Nile-Cliffdell Fire & Rescue with the support of Nile-Cliffdell Firefighters Association was proud to host the 2026 Yakima County Swiftwater Rescue Technician School—but this school represents something much larger than another training course.

It is the first major step toward the creation of a countywide Technical Rescue Team.

The vision is simple: bring agencies from across Yakima County together so we can contribute personnel, equipment, experience, and expertise to a unified technical rescue capability.

By working together, we can increase response capabilities, improve victim outcomes, and reduce the burden placed on any single agency.

This has been years in the making.

Four years ago, Nile-Cliffdell Fire & Rescue and Naches Fire Department adopted a shared vision for a unified approach to technical rescue. We knew that technical rescue incidents don't recognize jurisdictional boundaries—and that no single agency should have to build, equip, train, and sustain every specialized rescue capability on its own. Nor was it right to simply rely on the City of Yakima Fire Department Tech Rescue Team.

Now, joined by the horsepower, experience, and commitment of the City of Yakima Fire Department, that vision is becoming reality.

We want to thank Selah Fire Department, Yakima County Sheriff's Office, Naches Fire Department, Nile-Cliffdell Fire & Rescue, and City of Yakima Fire Department for sending personnel to this school and, more importantly, for committing to this vision.

To our swimmers:

Congratulations on earning your certifications as Swiftwater Rescue Technicians!

You endured days of classroom instruction, dry-land skills development, technical systems, swimming, rescue scenarios, and plenty of time getting cold, wet, knocked around, and worked over by the river.

You earned it.

We are incredibly proud of the attitude, teamwork, determination, and professionalism you brought to the course. These certifications represent more than individual accomplishments—they are building blocks for a rescue capability that will serve communities throughout Yakima County.

A huge thank-you to our outstanding Rescue 3 International instructors. You challenged us, taught us, pushed us, and reminded every student to embrace:

“Challenge by Choice.”

Thank you as well to Rescue Source and NRS for helping us with the equipment needed to put rescuers in the water safely and effectively.

And finally, the Chief's Bugle goes to Legends Casino and Hotel and the Yakama Cares Grant Program.

For the last several years, Legends Casino Hotel, through Yakama Cares, has provided financial assistance that helped nurture this vision from its conceptual stages into the capability we are beginning to see today.

To the entire team at Legends: thank you for your commitment to improving the safety of our community.

Your continued support over the years is finally coming to full-scale fruition. What began as an idea is becoming trained rescuers, specialized equipment, stronger partnerships, and a countywide team capable of responding when our communities need us most.

Because of your generosity, the benefit extends far beyond one fire district or one department.

The entire county will benefit from what you helped make possible.

There is still plenty of work ahead of us. More disciplines. More training. More equipment. More agencies around the table. More need for financial support.

But the foundation is being built.

Different patches. Different agencies. One team. One mission.

Yakima County Technical Rescue Team — the vision is becoming reality.

Ad Liberandum. - Chief Clark

08/07/2026

Airway Heights Fire Chief Mitch Metzger has seen more than his fair share of destructive wildland fires. But he won’t soon forget August 1, 2026, and the flames that swept through parts of Spokane County.

They’d braced for a critical fire weather day. Metzger canceled plans to visit his 91-year-old mother, and the team waited for the worst. But nothing prepared them for what happened.

It started with a call to the Old Trails Fire.

“Our brush truck was the first one to get there,” Metzger said as he described what his team faced. “The fields were on fire. The wind was blowing and pushing that fire toward the trees and houses. Access was a problem. There was more fire than they had water to put out.”

Then, Airway Heights sent an engine in for structure protection. The crew didn’t return to the station until one a.m. the next day. Staffing dropped so low that Metzger and his Assistant Chiefs had to respond to emergencies. They called in all available volunteers. A handful responded.

The fires didn’t slow.

“Our engine went all the way into the Five Mile area, working on house fires,” Metzger remembered. “I responded to the Espinola fire and assisted with evacuations and scene safety.”

Then came word that two of his Assistant Chiefs lived in newly declared evacuation zones. Neither stopped working.

“That’s an example of their commitment,” said Metzger. “It was technically their day off. Our Training Chief spent the entire day at work, not knowing whether his house was still standing. But we are here to take care of our citizens.”

That commitment keeps fire crews, both volunteer and paid, going day after day, fire after fire.

“We still have a lot of crews working hard on these fires,” Metzger said. “The ones from out of state don’t know our area. If you see them coming, give them some space. They're tired. Please listen to the police officers, volunteers, and National Guard who are out there. We're not closing roads to be jerks. We're closing roads because there's still a danger in that area.”

Now, Metzger and others are worried about possible incoming hot weather and winds. They urge people to listen to warnings and limit activities that can spark a fire.

After all, they know too well the high cost of carving out inches against a wind-fueled inferno.

📸: Erik Smith Photography

08/03/2026

This past weekend was an exceptionally busy one for the fire service across Yakima County. Dangerous fire weather, several multi-alarm incidents and a multi-agency state mobilization placed significant demands on emergency responders throughout our region.

While firefighters and apparatus were highly visible in our communities, an equally important effort was taking place behind the scenes.

West Valley Fire Department would like to recognize and thank the dispatchers at Valley Fire Yakima County Fire District #5 , along with the 911 call takers and dispatchers at SunComm . They answered hundreds of calls from concerned residents—many reporting the same rapidly developing fires—and worked tirelessly to gather critical information, prioritize emergencies, dispatch resources and maintain communication with crews throughout the weekend.

Every call had to be answered. Every report had to be evaluated. Every responding unit had to be tracked and supported.

Their calm voices, professionalism and dedication helped bring order to an extremely demanding and rapidly changing series of events. We are grateful for the essential role they play in protecting both our communities and the responders serving them.

From all of us at West Valley Fire Department: thank you for being there when Yakima County needed you most.