Bringing Heat to the Team: Baker City Hires New Firefighter, Looks to Add More
By Joe Hathaway on Thursday, September 7th, 2023 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
BAKER CITY — The Baker City Fire Department welcomed a new firefighter this week and hopes to continue filling its ranks.
The Department has been understaffed for more than a year. The department is currently budgeted for 10 full-time employees. Right now, it only has four full-time firefighters and a lieutenant, according to Chief Todd Jaynes.
“To have that low of an amount of firefighters in this town is worrisome,” said Jaynes.
He’s looking to add three more firefighters and a training captain, as well as more than a dozen paid part-time firefighters.
Jaynes, who’s been Chief for a little over a month, says just like most industries, it’s hard to fill positions.
“When I started years ago, you’d have 50 people in line trying to get a job as a firefighter. That’s not the case anymore.”
Jaynes says the new public safety fill that the City Council recently passed will not only help open more funds for new positions, but also cover funds for new equipment that he says is badly needed.
He says he’s heard vocal opposition to the new fee from some community members.
“As a fire department, we will do what we can with what we have. But people have to realize when their house is on fire, if we don’t have enough people to put it out, they can’t come to us and say we didn’t want to pay the fee but we wanted ten firefighters to come put the fire out.”
“Nobody wakes up in the morning and says boy, I wish I would have used my homeowners insurance last night,” said Jaynes.
Jaynes says he is happy with the support the department has been receiving from the community and that morale has been better as the department gets built back up.
The Chief says he’d also like to start a cadet program with schools in Baker to get kids interested at a young age to become firefighters.
The department will be holding its latest testing to look for recruits on Friday, September 9 at the Fire Station. Anyone interested in testing needs to fill out paperwork with the city beforehand. That information can be found on the city’s website.
