Sonoma Coast fire chief retiring after lifetime of service (2024)

It’s been 50 years since Erich Lynn rode to a call on the bumper of a fire engine with his brother. He was still too young to be listed on the volunteer roster for the fire department his parents helped start, but no less ready to join the fray.

When he hangs up his white chief’s helmet Sunday, retiring after a lifetime in firefighting and 22 years with the Timber Cove Fire Protection District, he’ll have to get used to life without the adrenaline and the constant interruption of fires, car wrecks and rescues.

Lynn, 64, says he’s ready. It’s been a good run. He is, he says, “getting to the point where I want to slow down some.”

But there’s just a hint of misgiving in the way he talks about turning in his pager after all this time, even if it means he can finally take vacation after 29 years―beginning Monday, when he plans to go fishing.

“I won’t have a pager,” he said, “but it’s going to be fun.”

In the way of rural communities where people know each other and the chief has “been in just about every house in this entire fire district,” he’s receiving visitors at the firehouse Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. so folks can wish him well and maybe tell him, ‘Thanks.’

Then he’ll turn the reins over to EMS Capt. Heidi Horvitz, a retired supervising state parks ranger who has served 11 years with the 48-square-mile fire district.

Horvitz said she’s encouraged Lynn for ages to take some time, but he was never willing to remove his pager.

“He’s very, very, very dedicated and, you know, he’s the guy you want there in an emergency,” Horvitz said. “He’s got an incredible wealth of knowledge.”

Lynn himself said he just “always felt so bad leaving town.”

“I would just be a nervous wreck, and I never enjoyed it,” he said. “Now I need to turn my pager off and go do a few things.”

Lynn’s parents, siblings, former wife and two daughters have all been attached to fire service in some way. He is among the diminishing ranks of old-school volunteer firefighters who have served rural communities going back decades, when people mostly lived and worked in the same area and had no one but each other to look to for help.

His parents lent some of the money needed to start the Fort Ross Volunteer Fire Department when he was a kid. Lynn was just 12 when he started fighting fires, even though he couldn’t meet the age cutoff of 16 to be listed on the roster.

He recalls riding on the bumper of the fire engine down Fort Ross Road at age 14 or 15 with his sister at the wheel. She was about 8 months pregnant and kept complaining that the steering wheel was rubbing against her belly.

“I’ve been in four fire departments since,” Lynn said, “and I’ve just loved it.”

He took a break of 10 or more years while working as an auto mechanic in Santa Rosa and, for a short time, in Oakland. But then he started working with heavy equipment, driving a tractor, trimming trees and doing fire abatement work. It allowed him to stay on the coast and drop everything when his pager sounded, then pick up later where he’d left off.

He also established a helicopter pad―Nichole’s Landing―in his family’s backyard so air ambulances needing to transfer patients had a designated place to go. U

“His whole life has revolved around this,” said west Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins. She recalled how Lynn arranged errands and appointments in Santa Rosa around whether fire staffing was available in his absence.

“He’s a good guy, really good guy,” she said.

“You can’t find anyone out here who is more dedicated to the community than that guy,” former Fire Capt. Scott Foster said.

Said Lynn, “It’s about helping people and making people happy. There are a lot of fire calls where you’re just there at the right time, and you take a little fire and put it out and think, ‘What would have happened if we hadn’t been there?’ ”

He said he’s especially enjoyed rope rescues because of how much team work is needed to deal with the fog, the steep cliffs, the tension. There’s the camaraderie of the fire house and neighboring stations, which train together and often response to one another’s call.

Firefighters may get on each other’s nerves amid the stress of a call, but then it’s over. “We’re just one big family,” Lynn said.

As if to underscore his point, both his daughters, Nichole and Megan, have served in the department, and their mother handles the books, he said.

Lynn saw the region grow and change, adding residents and coastal visitors who crowded the roads; watched as housing prices pushed out the young, raising the average age of his neighbors; and learned to scout newcomers for potential firefighters as busy lives made it harder to recruit volunteers.

What was once a department with 23 volunteer firefighters now gets by with 14.

During the years with Timber Cove Fire when he was still a captain or engineer, there were maybe 70 or 80 calls a year requiring a response. Now, there may be as many as 300, as summers and weekends draw more and more people to the Sonoma Coast.

But Lynn says it’s a good time for the transition, with the recent passage of half-cent sales tax under Measure H expected to provide new funding to Sonoma County’s regional fire agencies beginning next year, maybe even enough for a paid part-time chief at some point.

The department also is working on a county-funded master plan to help guide the agency’s future amid an ongoing discussion around prospects for further consolidation of the region’s myriad, small fire agencies―a push Lynn has supported, despite its complications.

“It’s bittersweet” seeing him leave, Horvitz said, knowing how much he loves going out on calls, Horvitz said. So she’s encouraged him to take some time, and if it seems right, come back as a firefighter―without the burdens of department chief.

But Lynn sounds like his mind is made up. He says he’ll miss the sound of his pager going off but not spending “Christmas Days out rescuing people and Thanksgiving dinners out dealing with a vehicle accident.”

“It’s been a good long run, and I had a lot of fun doing it,” Lynn said. But “when it’s time, it’s time, and you just have to go.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan (she/her) at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @MaryCallahanB.