Public safety mentor and guide retires after 47 years

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It’s the end of an era in Yacolt as longtime public safety leader Tom McDowell has officially stepped away from his post at Clark County Fire District 13 and North Country EMS. 

Most recently assistant chief for the two agencies, McDowell has been a part of the town and surrounding region’s fire and medical response services for nearly five decades, serving as chief for much of that time until his July 31 retirement.

McDowell has not completely separated himself from the agencies he helped to create. Much of his memorabilia still remains in his office which he will keep as he continues to lead the all-volunteer Volcano Rescue Team — another agency whose start he was instrumental in. 

His involvement with public safety in Yacolt dates back to 1971, when, on his way home from work at the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, he saw a need in the town. A shed had caught fire not too far out of town and there wasn’t enough manpower available to take care of the blaze. 

“In that time period there was almost no fire department in Yacolt at all,” McDowell said. There were some inexperienced but well-intentioned volunteers there, but no formal department to handle calls. 

McDowell, then undersheriff for Clark County, felt that if no one else could respond it was the sheriff’s office’s responsibility to do what they could. He went before the Yacolt Town Council to offer ideas — either for them to start their own official department or join up with a nearby one like Amboy.

The next night Yacolt’s mayor gave McDowell a call, asking if he would like to be Yacolt’s first official fire chief. He had some fire experience, serving as a volunteer during his time working at the Washington County Sheriff’s Office prior to the Clark County gig, and accepted the role. He still served as undersheriff through 1978.

Following the fire department, McDowell also helped to form North Country EMS in 1976, serving the medical side of public safety in the region. To this day the chief of FD13 is the chief of North Country with the latter serving a vast area of about 1,000 square miles in Clark, Cowlitz and Skamania counties. FD13 serves about 37 square miles including the town of Yacolt and its surrounding area as well as around Dole Valley and Sunset Falls roads.

About a decade later, in 1986, McDowell helped to start another public safety service, the Volcano Rescue Team. The all-volunteer team handles mountain-related incidents, created after Mount St. Helens was reopened for climbing.

McDowell was chief of FD13 and North Country EMS until 2011, then he assumed the assistant chief position as incoming chief Ben Peeler took over. Peeler himself left in 2017 with current chief Shaun Ford coming in. Moving to the assistant chief position was a sort of first step toward retirement.

Though Yacolt has grown from about 500 residents when he first arrived to more than 1,600 now, McDowell said it still has its small town charm.

“It’s more quiet here, except for the Fourth of July,” McDowell remarked. 



In the last few years McDowell said he saw “real progress” with the EMS and fire departments, in part due to opportunities to bolster both agencies’ finances. The fire department most recently put forth a levy lid lift to update some of its equipment which as of publication was passing at a greater than two-to-one margin.

Overall, he feels the agencies he helped to create are in a good place to continue serving the community even as he steps back. 

“Everybody has taken (the agencies’ jobs) seriously and has gotten the training and education to do the job right,” McDowell said. 

Talking to McDowell himself, some of his impact might be lost as he isn’t one to boast about his work. Talk to one of the hundreds of individuals he had led or mentored in public safety during his tenure, like former chief Peeler, and the soft-spoken firefighter’s legacy becomes apparent.

“People don’t do what he did,” Peeler said, referencing McDowell’s work in starting fire and emergency medical services essentially from scratch. “He put his life and soul into building something from nothing.”

“It obviously took a village, but it was his vision. It was him that drove it, and it was him that made it happen,” Peeler said. 

Peeler first met McDowell in the mid 1990s, connecting so Peeler could get into a firefighting program at Washington State University. He worked for the university’s department before moving back to Clark County where McDowell hired him for his agency, moving up the ranks before becoming chief.

“Tom has just been this amazing mentor and guide for me through my entire career from those very early days,” Peeler remarked. “As it relates to what he has done for public safety I cannot think of a bigger figure in Clark County than him in the last 50 years.”

McDowell said one of the first things he plans to do post-retirement is getting his house in order, the same one he moved into nearly five decades ago after accepting the undersheriff gig. He’s content remaining near Yacolt, nearby the majority of his children.

“All in all it’s a good community to live in,” McDowell said. “I don’t plan on moving out.”