The fire chief of Amargosa Valley is out of a job.
The town board voted 3-2 last week to relieve Trevor Dolby of his duties after what was described as mismanagement of the all-volunteer crew.
Other claims include misconduct, misuse or nonuse of fire department equipment and other performance issues, according to the town board’s agenda.
Town Board Chairman Joe Cohan said the action came after board members received complaints about Dolby’s unsafe behavior while on fire calls.
“Everybody was a little concerned about getting sued or whatever so we decided that since the board controls the fire chief and the fire department, we decided to let him go as far as being the fire chief so we wouldn’t have any more of those types of problems,” he said.
Cohan spoke about last year’s fire at the Amargosa Dairy, where the chief relinquished command of the fire to dairy personnel before the fire was fully extinguished.
“One of the complaints was that he turned the fire scene command over to the dairy personnel before the fire was put out and that’s kind of a bad thing which could really get us into trouble,” he said. “We also had complaints of him as fire scene commander placing a piece of apparatus against a structure.”
Nye County was in the process of removing all county owned equipment assigned to the Amargosa Fire Department before the removal of Dolby.
Cohan said the process to find a new fire chief is in the works.
He noted Dolby will remain with the fire department as a crew member.
“Right now the fire committee is checking into maybe hiring a retired fire personnel who could run the fire department and do it for pay, but not a whole lot,” he said. “It would be a good position for someone who is retired and just wants to do something on the side for us, that’s what we’re looking for.”
Cohan said though Dolby had taken several classes on firefighting, the board could not allow Dolby to continue as the department’s leader.
Dolby had been fire chief for roughly a year.
Oddly enough, he is also a member of the Amargosa Valley Town Board.
As such, Cohan noted the meeting, at times, was a bit awkward.
“Since he is a board member, he went ahead and voted for himself to keep the job,” Cohan said. “The vote was 3-2. The only other supporter for the chief was Vice Chairman John Bosta. The chief just neglected a few things that could have really gotten us into trouble. Rather than taking a chance on getting into trouble, we decided to handle it this way. Our hand was kind of forced because the county was holding us responsible if anything happened, because they would have to get involved also and they don’t want that. They were kind of pushing us to do what we did.”
A phone call placed to Dolby on Wednesday was met with a disconnected number message, while Bosta’s phone was not accepting calls.
Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes