Note: This was sent to the Arcata City Council and to the Arcata Fire District Board of Directors, Fire Chief, and Assistant Fire Chief prior to the joint study session with all of them, taking place on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, at the Fire Station / Fire District offices.

Be sure to read the story about the Cal Poly Humboldt dorm roomates, at the end. 
There is correction to the story. The two students are not freshmen. And the hammer they purchased is one specifically designed to break glass. Click here

Reading time:    10 minutes

To:  Honorable Mayor Stillman, Vice-Mayor White, Councilmembers Atkins-Salazar, Matthews, and Schaefer

CC: Arcata City Manager Merritt Perry, Assistant City Manager Tabatha Miller, Arcata Fire District Board of Directors, AFD Chief Chris Emmons, AFD Assistant Chief Ross McDonald

From:    Fred Weis

Date:  September 9, 2025

Subject:
Joint Study Session, September 10, 2025
Arcata Fire Safety Issues
Funding for improvements to the Arcata Fire District’s capabilities
Suggestions

Dear Mayor and Councilmembers –

I apologize for the lateness on this message.  This is organized so that you can read and skim.

Three sections: 
[Click to go directly to that section]

Overview
The City Council has these important decisions to make
How the AFD increase in capabilities can be funded

Overview

1. The Triton Standards of Cover report.
   I consider this report to be woefully inadequate. I’ve been told that Triton is capable of a meaningful study, but this report is not. It does not come close to dealing with the issues that it was intended to provide solutions for. It is my view that Triton should be given 90 days to correct the issues. (We can offer assistance as to what is missing.) Should that not be acceptable, then 100% of funds paid should be returned.

2. I am writing because of one simple reason. I do not want someone to die from a fire in Arcata.

   When I write to you, I’m not asking that you believe in total what I say. The Council can listen to the AFD and the AFD’s Board of Directors, and to the City’s Finance Director, Tabatha Miller. I hope you can accept that the AFD and the City’s Finance Director know what they are talking about. The proposals in the Triton report do not even keep up with the rising costs from inflation. The proposals are barely sufficient to just maintain current services. The proposals do not bring in enough to allow for the growth of Arcata – and that was the stated goal of this study. See “Triton’s Standards of Cover report ‘recommendations’ are worthless” on Arcata1.com.

3. A request to all involved:  Please acknowledge that this is not a growth vs. no growth / taller buildings vs. no buildings / housing for Arcata vs. impediment to housing. From what I see, the Arcata Fire District is not against taller buildings. Nor am I. I am against irresponsible construction.

   So long as the fire safety issue is viewed as counter to providing housing, we are in an “us versus them” discussion — which is not conducive to real problem-solving.

   It seems to me that the goal should be to see what’s necessary so that the AFD can indeed provide adequate fire and safety protection for taller buildings. I have suggestions – see below.

4. Legal liability. The City Attorney presumably has weighed in on this. The Council may also want to get another opinion. In cases where the City has full knowledge of an unsafe condition and chooses to deny or ignore it, there is a very different potential for liability. A fire department that is part of the city government is also very different from a situation such as the AFD, where essentially Arcata is contracting with the AFD. The AFD has been very clear as to what services they can and cannot provide. I am not a lawyer, as we know. Yet it seems that Arcata is putting itself greatly at risk.

   Further, Arcata’s own Gateway Code specifies that a permit will not be granted on a building that is detrimental to the public interest, health, or safety, or is potentially materially injurious to persons or property.  See the City Council portal on Arcata1 for more on this. You can reach the portal at:  Arcata1.com/council

5. I believe it is time that Councilmembers can recognize:
   1.  An apartment can meet the building codes and be approved by the fire marshal, and yet still be seen by the AFD as the AFD not being able to provide adequate fire safety.  Fire marshal approval and AFD capabilities are two entirely separate issues.
   2. The primary intent of firefighters is not to save the building. It is to save people. To accomplish this, more firefighters than the AFD can round up are needed.
   3. Past statements from some Councilmembers indicate that they believe that a modern building is safe. We can say that a modern building is “safer.” A building does not have to be destroyed by flames for there to be fatalities. Smoke kills people. Again, the AFD can say more on this.
   4. Please also keep in mind that while the new 7-story dorm is built to high standards with non-combustible material (and at great cost), a four- or five-story building in Arcata will not be. Sorrel Place and other proposed construction is wood-frame. It will burn. And the contents of people’s apartments will burn – and make smoke.

In my view, the City Council has the following important decisions to make

1. The Triton report. Accept it as-is; ask for a substantial update (to be specified); or reject it. To me, to accept this report as-is would be a terrible injustice to the Arcata Fire District and also to the people of Arcata.  It has been three years since then-Board President Eric Loudenslager spoke to the Planning Commission, on August 4, 2022. Virtually nothing has happened since then to improve the fire safety in Arcata.

   To construct an apartment building with the knowledge that the inhabitants are not safe seems very wrong.

2. Establish the legal liability situation. I really do not feel that the standard City government shield will work. Part of the potential for liability is based on the severity of any injury – and awareness of the city government to the problem.

   You may remember the Fire Chief’s response at a previous meeting when asked about how the AFD is dealing with the current four-story building, Sorrel Place. I don’t recall his exact words, but essentially he said:  We have our fingers crossed. We hope nothing bad happens.
   IMO, to rely on luck and good fortune is a terrible predicament to be in.

3. The Council needs to decide if it is willing to have Arcata grant permits for four-story or taller buildings. The proposed Rogers Garage apartments may be an upcoming example. We should be made aware of what else is on the horizon.

   If the City does approve 4-story and taller buildings, it is doing so against the clearly stated capabilities of the Fire District.

4. How to create a viable pathway to financing the AFD expansion.
   I have ideas on this – see the next section. The Triton report was supposed to do this – and it did not.

   After the last meeting (interrupted), I stood with AFD Board member Randy Mendosa and City Manager Merritt Perry as this was being discussed. Randy was asked to consult with the Chief and then write out what equipment and personnel would be needed, and the costs. IMO this is not a good idea. One purpose of the Triton study was to have an outside consultant make this cost study. An external third-party would present an unbiased view.

5. The Council should look at whether to remove the Community Development Director from everything related to this AFD coverage issue. This includes no staff reports and no advice to the Council and Planning Commission.
   
   There is an actual practical reason for this. Director Loya has a known, recorded, continual history of downplaying the fire safety situation, of minimizing the AFD’s position, of misstating other people’s words on this fire safety issue, and of providing material to the Commission and Council which may be construed as false. If a lawsuit were to occur, the words and actions of Director Loya would play right into the hands of any competent plaintiff’s attorney.

   Here’s a recent example. The staff report for the September 10 meeting has as its last sentence of “Discussion”:

     “The District will use the Report to help identify funding sources and to start a conversation with the community about the level of service that is acceptable.”

This is a total mischaracterization. The words of this staff report sentence are false.

1) The AFD is not using the report to identify funding sources. There are no funding sources in this report that the ADF did not already know of.

2) The AFD is not “starting” a conversation with the community. The conversations have been going on openly for over three years. The use of the word “start” creates a false connotation. This is an ugly implication.

3) The AFD is not talking to the community about what level of service is acceptable. The AFD itself determines what level of service is acceptable. The AFD already knows what level of service is acceptable. The City of Arcata will determine if it is willing to accept what the Arcata Fire District says it is capable of.

Director Loya’s words indicate and imply that we are starting something, and that the AFD needs to learn something. No, we are in the middle – and we’re in the middle (and not at the conclusion) because of delays, many of which were caused or encouraged by the Director’s actions. And the AFD knows what their situation is. 

You may think I am being overly harsh in picking apart that sentence, but what I wrote is a response to what that sentence says. It is a terribly misleading sentence.

I bring this up for one reason, as stated above. If there were to be an injury and then a subsequent lawsuit, what the Community Development Director has done or not done will be strong fuel for the plaintiff’s case. The Council can talk to the City Attorney on this. In the event of a lawsuit, misstatements from the Community Director may well be the difference between winning and losing.

If the Council completely believes that the City is shielded from liability, then this does not matter (except for the propagation of false statements by the Director). If there is any possibility that there could be a lawsuit – even if the City were to prevail – I can guarantee that the plaintiff’s lawyers will make use of Director Loya’s words.

I propose that Assistant City Manager Tabatha Miller be the point person for all communications and presentations on the fire safety issue.

How to fund the AFD for increased personnel, equipment, training, and infrastructure

This is my opinion. I am open to all ideas.

1. Funding amounts that would make a difference are not going to come from Cal Poly Humboldt. They have their own budget problems. Moreover, an amount that would really make a difference to the AFD –say, $1.5 million annually – would represent an amount close to 1% of their budget. That is more than they will be willing to pay.

   If they offered to contribute $100,000 or $200,000 annually, that would be nice (i.e. better than nothing), but it is nowhere near enough to tip the scales into adequate fire protection. And I doubt they will cough up even that. More like $40,000.

   Voters would be far more likely to approve an increase in their payments if they felt the university was also contributing some amount seen as a “fair share.”  But that is not likely.

   Perhaps Finance Manager Miller can tell us what other City/University arrangements are. I researched this and got stalled. UC Berkeley’s contribution to the city amounts to about 1/10th of 1%. (But UC Berkeley should not be held up as an example, for many reasons. Their budget is $3.8 billion.)

2. Voters should go for a Cost of Living-based increase. That will be good for the AFD to keep up with inflation on their own costs, but, again, it doesn’t do much for expansion of the facilities to provide fire safety for taller buildings.
   
3. It would be good if a dense apartment were to be built in Arcata before any vote. An apartment for working people – not a lower-income building and definitely not a luxury building (or viewed as luxury). The City cannot control what will be built. But without such an apartment, a vote might be seen as citizens paying for fire protection that’s needed for the dorms.  Getting something passed will not be a slam-dunk, IMO.
4. It has been my view that the money to expand the capabilities of the AFD will by necessity come directly from the State.
   IMO, $20 million up front and $3 or $4 million a year is not a lot of money, on a State-budget basis. Somehow we have to convince them that this is important.

   I say “by necessity” because no one else has the money in the amount that’s needed. Not the university, not the developers, not the tenants, and definitely it cannot be asked from the citizens of Arcata.

5. It is my view that the way to get this money is, in a sense, to extort or threaten the State and the CSU system.
   What I say is:  If there were to be even a small fire and a few students were hospitalized for smoke inhalation, and it became known that the AFD has been saying for years that they could not get students out of the dorm building – that is the makings of a scandal. If the LA Times picked up on it, it does become a scandal.

   In such a case, parents would be removing their children from Cal Poly, and the entire CSU would be evaluated for safety compliance. I propose that a withdrawal of students from Cal Poly Humboldt would cost them dozens of millions. If it were a more wide-spread scandal, the cost to CSU could be a hundred million.

   To convince the State to come up with money for us, they need to be told what could happen if they don’t. It has to be “an offer that they can’t refuse.” The AFD wrote a strong response to the draft EIR prior to the dorms being built. The lack of fire protection is known. And it’s known that it’s been ignored.

   The City of Arcata can capitalize on this issue. It will be far cheaper for the State to give money to Arcata and the AFD for fire protection than it would be for them to deal with the issue should even a minor problem occur.

In closing, I will tell this story. It was related to me by a source that I trust completely. And, no, I am not making this up.

Two new freshmen are roommates in the 7-story dorm building. They are living on the fourth floor. They have in their room a hammer and a piece of rope long enough to reach the ground. The hammer is to break the glass window. They were aware that the firefighters in Arcata likely would not be able to help if there were to be a fire in the dorms.  These new college students were already aware of the danger of living in that dorm building.

Please consider what I have written here. And, more strongly, please listen to the Chief, the staff, and the members of the Board of the Arcata Fire Protection District. They know what they are doing far more than I do.

I want to see some forward progress on this issue. Getting $100,000 or $200,000 here and there is not going to make a big enough difference. I am asking the City Council to do something bold.

Thank you.

Respectfully,

Fred Weis

Note: After that e-mail was sent, I learned that the story about the dorm roommates needs to be corrected. The two students are not freshmen. And the hammer they purchased is one specifically designed to break glass.