Washington

On a Tuesday evening in early July, Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer sat at the head of a small conference room along with about a dozen members of his posse.

One — a young wildland firefighter — was affectionately called “the big man.” Another was a gun dealer in his early 80s. They were there to discuss their annual role in supporting wildfire evacuations in a building Songer’s department shares with a senior center in White Salmon, a town of roughly 2,500 in south-central Washington and the stronghold of the county’s Democratic Party.