Union City and Union Rural Fire Districts are Attempting to Merge
By Garrett Christensen on Thursday, September 1st, 2022 in Northeastern Oregon News Northeastern Oregon Top Stories
UNION, OR – In Eastern Oregon, it often comes down to the hard work and dedication of volunteers to keep local emergency services operational. The City of Union is no exception to this. However, even the most dedicated of volunteers can still fall victim to bureaucratic quarks, like running two legally distinct fire protection districts out of the same station using the same crews.
The Union City Fire Department and Union Rural Fire Protection District are, on paper, two distinct entities serving the city of Union and the city’s outlying rural areas respectively. Each agency also has its own fire chief. In practice however, the line between them is blurred to an inconvenient degree. As described by Union Rural Fire Protection District Chief Craig Kretschmer, who is also the fire chief for the La Grande Rural Fire Protection District:
“It’s a difficult situation when you have the same firefighters in the same building. The building is owned by the rural department, some of the engines are owned by the city and so are the ambulances. There’s also an engine, a brush truck and two tenders owned by the rural district and so it gets confusing when it comes to who pays for what, who’s liable for what and who’s going in what rig. There’s a lot of stuff that could and should be cleaned up. Further, technically having two chiefs is not the best because it’s a hierarchy thing in the fire service. Having one person in charge is a good thing.”
Union City Fire Chief Casey George echoed these sentiments, noting that most of the volunteers for both crews are actually the same people. During fire calls that occur may occur near both the city district and rural district, deciding which agency, and in turn which trucks, should respond can slow the processes down.
The small size of the Union volunteer team, usually only 2-6 people with no in-house staff according to chief George, further exacerbates the need to unify the districts and allow the volunteers that serve Union to operate as smoothly as possible.
The stations are in the process of merging, similar to how Elgin City and Elgin Rural previously merged into the Elgin Rural Fire Protection District, consolidating assets and streamlining the chain of command. According to Kretschmer though, this merge has been ongoing for several years, with no official confirmation as to its status. Meetings are still allegedly taking place but neither fire chief nor their respective crews are heavily involved. “It’s not a very easy process, you have to have the right people in place that want to make it happen,” noted Kretschmer, who further attributed the issue to Union resident’s simply not being aware that the stations are even separate and in need of consolidation.
