Del Norte County Search & Rescue badge | Facebook

Local advocates applauded a Board of Supervisors’ decision last week to green light an emergency shelter as part of a “continuum of housing services” on county property to combat homelessness.

But an important question remains — what will happen to Del Norte County Search & Rescue? It’s a concern District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey raised when Del Norte Mission Possible representatives and Health and Human Services Director Ranell Brown presented an overview of their plans for the Williams Drive property.

Starkey pointed out that demolishing the county’s old mental health building to make way for the 50-unit pallet home village will displace DNSAR. She asked if the $10.8 million Encampment Resolution Funding grant Del Norte received for its plans to combat homelessness will help Search & Rescue find a new home.
Brown’s answer to that question was no.

“We’ve been in discussions with the sheriff prior to being awarded these ERF funds. We’ve discussed different options,” she told Starkey on Feb. 13. “We asked the state specifically if relocation costs are an allowable expense and they said no. However, we are able to cover the cost of the demolition.”

Sheriff Garrett Scott confirmed that his office has been talking with DHHS and the ad-hoc homelessness committee about the Williams Drive building that currently houses DNSAR. Search & Rescue takes up a small part of that building, he said.

It’s an old building — full of asbestos, the sheriff said. He said he and County Administrative Officer Neal Lopez have been working on relocating DNSAR.

Scott said his office has a minimum of about three or four months before Del Norte Search & Rescue has to vacate its current home.

“We want to make sure we find a place for them to go,” he told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Thursday. “There are possibilities of some smaller buildings that are near the sheriff’s office that are potentially usable, and we’re talking with our local fire district — they have a few buildings they just use for storage they may be willing to let us rent or lease. We have things in the works.”

DNSAR responds to snow rescues, fire rescues and jetty rescues. They’ll assist with tsunami evacuations, rappel down steep embankments and comb through dense brush in the snow for missing hikers.

Willing to put themselves into a broad spectrum of situations, DNSAR volunteers have a variety of equipment they rely on. The Williams Drive building is where they store much of their equipment, Scott said.

“One room is set up with all sorts of rappelling gear and equipment and there’s another room that has water rescue gear, for example like your jetty rescues,” he said. “One would think, ‘Why couldn’t they have that in their car?’ We have to remember that each member is a different size and wears different size gear. Their vehicles already have a ton of gear in them for the initial response, they’ll send a message to the station to get more equipment.”

According to Lopez, the Williams Drive building is about 4,000 square feet and has been sitting nearly vacant for years due to the asbestos. He said he and the previous CAO, Jay Sarina, knew that it would be expensive to remove the asbestos and weren’t entirely sure whether the building could be reused.

“The county always needs space,” Lopez said. “Demolition was — we were hoping it wouldn’t be the end result, but at this stage, the building’s been vacant long enough and with our weather, it’s just been deteriorating.”

Lopez said it’s taking “all of us working together” to find a solution that would meet the needs of Del Norte Search & Rescue while not holding up the homelessness project.

There are a few options, including a fire station on Cooper Avenue that Crescent Fire & Rescue no longer uses as well as vacant lots across the street from the Sheriff’s Office’s 5th Street station. Lopez said the county could put mobile units on those lots for DNSAR.

According to Brown, Del Norte County needs to have 50 percent of its grant spent by June 30, 2025 and 100 percent spent by June 30, 2026.

SHARE →