John McNutt joined Grays Harbor Fire District 2 on Jan. 1, filling the top position for the department.

An Air Force veteran, McNutt previously served as a volunteer firefighter, a deputy fire marshal for Washington and a fire chief in Palmer, Alaska among other positions.

“My goal is not to come in here and change things for the sake of change,” McNutt said in an interview. “You always build upon your prior experience. You learn how to do things and you learn how things shouldn’t be done.”

McNutt said his priorities are clear-cut: establishing a plan and a schedule for the overhaul of the department’s vehicles.

“Biggest priorities internally are maintenance and replacement of our vehicle fleet. We have an aging vehicle fleet and it needs replacement,” McNutt said. “The larger apparatus, the engines and tender, they’re getting older.”

While the vehicles are still perfectly capable, McNutt said, replacement parts for older vehicles can be more difficult to find and that can affect operational readiness. While fire vehicles may not have particularly high mileage, they clock up a lot of time running their engines at an incident scene.

“They sit for hours at a fire scene running and pumping water,” McNutt said. “That wear and tear does take its toll.”

Fire vehicles are expensive to source, and there’s some bottlenecks in production right now telescoping delivery times, McNutt said, but that cost can be defrayed by the service life of the vehicles.

“You’ll have it for 20 years in operation,” McNutt said. “Most people don’t even have their private automobile for 20 years.”

Fire District 2 covers a large area, stretching from Aberdeen Lake Road in the west to Brady in the east, from south of the Chehalis River north up the Wynoochee Valley, all while encysting Montesano. The district maintains four stations which have various functions, McNutt said.

“You have your structure fires, your wild-land incidents. Whether it’s a wooded area or someone’s burning trash,” McNutt said. ”You have your occasional vehicle fires. And you have your fire alarms. (Emergency Medical Services) is the large bulk of our emergencies.”

District 2 is staffed by seven career firefighters and about 25 to 30 volunteer firefighters, McNutt said. Mutual aid agreements with other departments help District 2 to combat larger incidents if many of the volunteer firefighters are unavailable, McNutt said.

“(The department has) a very well trained staff, both career and volunteer,” McNutt said. “(Residents are) well protected.”

McNutt said he’s going to spend time getting to know the community as he settles into the position.

“The big thing for me is getting a chance to really learn what’s going on for District 2 and moving forward to continue to grow and give the residents the service they need,” McNutt said. “If you have concerns, questions, comments both good and bad, please reach out. I’m hoping to reach out to the community and hear what they have in mind.”

Contact reporter Michael S. Lockett at 757-621-1197 or mlockett@thedailyworld.com.