Three Nevada County Fire Agencies– Nevada County Consolidated, Grass Valley, and Nevada City,  have signed off on a new Joint Operations Agreement. Interim Grass Valley Fire Chief Mark Buttron says  Grass Valley Fire and Nevada County Consolidated have had a Joint Operations Agreement for the past 13 years and Nevada City Fire has joined them for the past 8 years. He says the new J-O-A rolls all three agency documents into one, and  is open ended with no expiration date.
Click here to listen to Chief Mark Buttron

Buttron says the backbone of the agreement is “closest resource dispatching” which means they will get the closest resource to the incident regardless of what agency it may be.
Click here to listen to Chief Mark Buttron

Buttron says right now the JOA is between the three agencies but other fire departments are welcome to join.
Click here to listen to Chief Mark Buttron

Nevada County’s Fire Departments are also getting closer to setting up one chief position to handle administrative affairs for multiple agencies. Supervisor Hank Weston, who has over 45 years with California fire protection agencies, has been facilitating those discussions.