Nearly All Vedauwoo Volunteer Firefighters Resign, Upset With Board Actions

Nearly every member of the Vedauwoo Volunteer Fire Department resigned Thursday, after weeks of controversy in the department.

Detractors of the mass resignation say the department’s members had been acting outside safety standards and clashing with firefighters from other departments, and that the Albany County Fire District No. 1 Board did its best to address these issues.

The leaders of the resignation wave, conversely, say they left because the board operated without transparency and good faith, suspending both Vedauwoo Volunteer Fire Department (VVFD) Chief Scott Green and Assistant Chief Ty Sanchez.

The suspension was “based on unsupported claims,” alleges a Saturday letter the VVFD posted to its Facebook page. The letter says the board “refused to investigate serious discrimination and harassment concerns that were brought forward by our members, and (did not allow) our department to respond to any calls within our own response area and assisting mutual area partners.”  

At least one member of the department Dave Bray, did not resign. Bray was appointed temporary interim chief after a Monday emergency meeting of the district board.

He declined Monday to comment to Cowboy State Daily, referring the outlet to the board.

Albany County Fire District No. 1 Chair Matt Burkart responded to Cowboy State Daily’s emailed request for comment with a prepared statement. The statement emphasizes that not everyone resigned.

Some sources say one person remained at the department after the mass resignation; others say two people remained.

“While there were firefighter resignations received, capable and qualified firefighters remain at VVFD, one of which is Temporary Interim Chief Bray,” says the board’s statement. “ The District did not shut down the Vedauwoo Volunteer Fire Department or terminate any firefighters.”

Personnel Matter

Board Secretary Jon Essley in a phone interview said the matter is difficult to address because so much of it falls under the confidentiality in personnel matters that Wyoming law requires. Essley directed Cowboy State Daily to an earlier, open letter the district published Saturday to its website.

The district board has been responding to “concerns and complaints” since mid-February, the board’s letter says.

The VVFD has been taken off the job since that time.

And the Albany County Fire District 1 Central Department has been responding to fires in that area, the letter adds.  

“VVFD has not been providing any fire suppression or incident response and will not do so until further notice,” says the letter. The board has been trying “management and leadership collaborative practices that restore the trust and confidence of our partners, collaborators and taxpayers, that excellent fire protection and suppression leadership, responses and resources will be provided across the District by all Departments,” it says.

Lookback

This story is “way bigger than the media understands,” former VVFD Chief Matt Isborn told Cowboy State Daily in a Monday interview.

Isborn was the fire chief for more than three years. The departments in that district elect their own fire chiefs generally.

In 2024, Isborn dismissed from the department a new recruit named Zach Hallam, after hearing from other fire leaders in the state that Hallam had a criminal record involving wrongs against a fire department.

Hallam had at that time worked for a business that Green and Sanchez run together, Isborn said.

After that, at a September 2024 election, Isborn was not reelected. Green and Sanchez were.

In his own interview, Sanchez said he didn’t believe Isborn’s failed reelection was related to Hallam’s dismissal.  

Sanchez said Isborn would repeatedly, “randomly” dismiss firefighters; while Isborn called that claim false.  

As for Hallam, he lamented Monday to Cowboy State Daily that the department and the other Wyoming fire leaders who alerted Isborn to his past weren’t willing to give him another chance.

“This state doesn’t know how to let somebody that’s made mistakes in the past move past them,” said Hallam.

Hallam also confirmed that he’d done some sales for Green and Sanchez.

Mid-February

In mid-February, the district suspended Green and Sanchez.

The public had aired safety complaints about Vedauwoo’s methods, including running lights and sirens through the town of Laramie against the town’s requirements, and clashing with incident command on ongoing fire scenes, said a former fire fighter who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Sanchez told Cowboy State Daily those claims aren’t valid. If Vedauwoo’s drivers ran through the town of Laramie with lights and sirens at all, “it was pretty rare,” he said.

In the weeks that followed, VVFD was banned from responding to nearly all incident calls.

And last week, the district board presented VVFD leadership with four pages of directives that Ty Sanchez’s son, VVFD training officer Austin Sanchez, called vague. These directives were to be undertaken by Green and Ty Sanchez, who were to be reinstated to their posts at that time.

Austin Sanchez declined to provide Cowboy State Daily with the list of directives, saying they’re technically Green’s, since he was the fire chief.

Sanchez said he and Green never received the directives, as they were locked out of the fire chief email account. Austin Sanchez obtained them because he was interim chief during their suspension, said Ty Sanchez.

Essley also declined to give the directive papers to the outlet, saying they’re part of the personnel matters.

According to Austin Sanchez, the board wanted to put the entire department on a 120-day probationary period during which the members weren’t allowed to train or do any other function except their monthly business meeting.

“They were calling into question (like) our training wasn’t adequate,” said Austin Sanchez. “But we go through the state Fire Marshal (training programs).”

The Wyoming Fire Marshal’s office did not immediately respond to a late-day request for comment Monday.

Austin said he had one of his own reasons for leaving the job last week: “If they’re not going to let me train my firefighters to be safe, that’s not a position I’m going to put myself in.”

Expanding The Auxiliary

When Isborn went with Bray Saturday to inspect the department’s equipment, a $20,000-$30,000 command trailer, a barbecue grill, and other equipment were gone. That equipment is not the department’s: it belongs to the VVFD Auxiliary, which is a 501c3 nonprofit group that raises money for the department.

Green’s wife, Jolean Green, is the Auxiliary treasurer, and Ty Sanchez’s wife Eileen Sanchez is the Auxiliary’s president.

The women confirmed in a Monday interview that they had the equipment removed because it belongs to the Auxiliary, not the department, and said they’ll re-dedicate it to some other fire suppression fundraising cause.

Jolean said it’s a good thing they did remove the equipment because they feared they’d lose access to it.

“In fact, our codes have been removed from the door,” Jolean said.

The resigning firefighters’ Saturday Facebook statement says the Auxiliary will expand its mission.

That could get messy, said Isborn, since people who have been supporting the Auxiliary have done so with the understanding that their money was going toward firefighting in the Vedauwoo area.

“That is money that was raised and donated by neighbors and events from the community for servicing the fire department,” said Isborn. “That’s why people donated that money.

Isborn estimated the auxiliary has about $78,000.

The women declined to say how much the group has, or to ballpark from Isborn’s figure, saying, “we couldn’t give you an accurate number.”

“If we change our mission, it would be an expansion – and we’d continue to support all the departments within Albany County, said Eileen Sanchez, adding that the group will have more direction after the district board’s April 23 meeting where it will determine next steps with Vedauwoo. 

At A Bar

The resignation letter says the VVFD has reported discrimination and harassment concerns, but that the district has not addressed those.

Ty Sanchez said this stems from a firefighter on the Albany County Central Department who “keeps harassing our firefighters, especially our female firefighters.”

“He approached one of our guys in a bar, bad-mouthing Vedauwoo and all this stuff,” said Ty Sanchez.

The former VVFD firefighter who spoke on condition of anonymity, conversely, said the firefighter from Central gave the VVFD volunteer “a ration of crap” over the recent safety concerns with VVFD.

“He hurt their feelings a little bit,” said the firefighter. 

Though Ty Sanchez identified the Central firefighter by name, Cowboy State Daily could not find his contact information in time to give him a chance to respond to the harassment claims against him.

In his own brief interview with the department, the recently-retired chief Scott Green voiced frustration.

“Nobody’s going to remember the good things my department did and my people did,” said Green. “They’re going to remember this. Because this is more sensational than the 4,000 hours collectively those people train and respond to calls and fundraise.”

Ty Sanchez echoed that, saying a volunteer position isn’t worth the controversy to him, especially amid the normal toll of everyday life.

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.