Snoqualmie Fire Chief presents 2024 annual report highlighting staffing gains, rising call volume and training

Chief Mark Bailey presented the Snoqualmie Fire Department’s 2024 annual report to the Public Safety Committee on July 7, outlining staffing changes, call-volume trends and training accomplishments.

Bailey said the department “ended the year with 1,715” calls and that “50% of those were emergency medical calls related.” He told the committee the city saw “a 9.1% increase in call volume from the previous year,” and that Friday is typically the busiest day.

The report, Bailey said, notes accreditation numbers provided with assistance from the City of Bellevue, and documents organizational changes. Bailey told the committee the department added three full‑time positions for 2025 to address prior staffing challenges and earlier hires in 2024 replaced resignations.

Why it matters: the department’s staffing and training affect response capacity, mutual‑aid interoperability and local emergency preparedness for Snoqualmie residents and visitors.

Most of Bailey’s presentation focused on operational metrics used for accreditation and planning. He said canceled or “good intent” calls accounted for about 24% of responses (often because other Eastside units cleared calls), fires were about 3% of incidents, and automatic false alarms came mainly from commercial systems. Bailey reported 370 total transports in 2024, 75 of which were outside the city when crews were operating in neighboring jurisdictions.

He described mutual aid patterns: “54% of our calls were Snoqualmie where just our units responded,” about 31% were joint responses (mostly Eastside) and roughly 15% were times when an outside unit responded into Snoqualmie. He also summarized property‑loss trends and said 2024’s larger commercial loss increased content loss compared with the city’s typical figures.

On training, Bailey said the department logged roughly 7,100 hours and joined a regional training consortium that now covers 15 departments and about 1,300 firefighters across King County. “For the most part, 90% of the fire training is standardized between all the departments,” Bailey said, adding that standardized hose‑lays and radio terminology improve interoperability.

Bailey highlighted volunteer contributions and a departmental shift away from volunteer firefighters to an EMS‑volunteer model: volunteers logged hundreds of on‑duty shifts, responses and community events and nearly 4,000 hours of support. He said the city now focuses on EMS volunteers and noted four new volunteers began recently. Chair Rob Watt and Council Member Cotton both praised volunteers; Watt called it a “huge amount of gratitude,” and said Snoqualmie’s local response times “are some of the best there are anywhere.”

The chief also reviewed emergency‑management items: no full EOC activations in 2024, completion of a CEMP, partial activations for weather monitoring and plans for an EOC exercise later this year. Bailey noted the department added a new engine (recently unveiled) and ordered a replacement aid car in 2025 (approximately an 18‑month build time). He listed near‑term goals: increase volunteers (target noted in the report), complete onboarding of three additional firefighters (begun in 2025), outfit and place the new engine in service, and continue developing the EOC and CERT programming.

Discussion vs. decisions: the presentation was informational. The committee did not take a formal vote on the report; the department’s plans (hiring, equipment purchases, EOC exercise) reflect previously budgeted or ongoing actions rather than committee motions at this meeting.

For follow up, Bailey and the committee noted continued emphasis on volunteer recruitment, finishing the engine outfitting and conducting the planned EOC exercise in the fourth quarter.

Ending: Committee members expressed support for the department’s training and outreach, and asked for continued updates as new volunteers are recruited and the department brings new apparatus into service.