Union county Search and Rescue reflects on 2025
By Garrett Christensen on Tuesday, January 6th, 2026 in Featured Stories More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
UNION COUNTY – 2025 Was a busy year for Oregon’s emergency responders, not least of all the various volunteer organizations that went above and beyond keeping the state’s rural communities safe. Reflecting on the previous year, the incredible effort put in by volunteers, and what the number of calls means for public safety, Union County Search and Rescue recently posted an extensive reflection on their 2025 operations. See the full write up from Union County SAR below:
(Release from Union County Search and Rescue)
Thank you to the deputies, officers, dispatchers, troopers, firefighters, financial supporters, sheriff’s office administration, neighboring SAR teams, and most importantly, our amazing and dedicated SAR volunteers for another year of successful search and rescue missions in Union County.
Union County SAR responded to 32 missions in 2025, continuing the slow but steady trend of increasing call volume. Just 10 years ago in 2015, SAR had only 13 mission call-outs. June was our busiest month this past year with five call-outs, followed by November, with four. July and December tied for the slowest months, with only one call-out each. We had just four out-of-county mutual aid responses this year, which is notably lower than recent years, such as 2023, when over 1/4 of all calls were mutual aid responses. The farthest call in 2025 was a 145-mile response by our water rescue team to Malheur County.
In 2025, 58% of our missions were rescues, and 39% were searches. Other calls included assists to law enforcement and body recoveries. Of our searches, 17% were for hunters, 25% gatherers, and the balance included subject categories of autism, mental illness, water recreation, young children, and others. With all call types combined, hunters were the category with the highest aggregate calls, but that was only 13% of all calls.
Our SAR team put in approximately 3,350 hours of time, with 885 mission hours (28 hours per call average), 2,018 training hours, and approximately 450 hours of public education and equipment maintenance. This means that the SAR team spent approximately 2.3 hours training for every hour of emergency response. The financial contribution of SAR volunteers’ documented time in 2025 is in excess of $117,250 based on published 2025 Oregon emergency service volunteer time values. SAR drove approximately 18,321 miles this year, with over 13,000 of those miles accrued on personally-owned vehicles, an estimated value over $9,000.
Our amazing records officer Molly Burke has entered approximately 1,000 different database entries to allow us to capture these statistics, not to mention all of the other training and certification data that she maintains for us.
To everyone within SAR and those who so eagerly assist us, thank you for all you have done in the past year, and also for what we know you would have been willing to do if asked.
Union County SAR is a 501(c)3 non-profit and tax-deductible donations to support us can be made via PayPal (link below) or by mailing a check to Union County SAR in care of the Union County Sheriff’s Office at 1109 K Ave., La Grande, OR 97850. We can provide donation receipts upon request.
PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/ZGLR3XR56ELJN
