A house in Canyon City was destroyed in a fire circa 1968. The entrance to Sels' Brewery is visible just to the right. Ron Phillips is manning a hose at the top of the ladder.

When your house is on fire, you expect the fire department to come and put it out. But what if you called for help and nobody came?

In Grant County, that nightmare scenario is all too close to becoming reality.

As Rick LaMountain reported in last week’s edition of the Blue Mountain Eagle, every one of Grant County’s fire departments is staffed entirely by volunteers — and every one of them is struggling to attract enough new ones to keep responding to fire calls.

It’s not unusual for small communities to rely on volunteers for fire protection. According to a 2020 survey by the National Fire Protection Association, 97% of firefighters in towns with populations of less than 2,500 are volunteers. But the number of volunteers is shrinking, and those who remain are growing older. The same survey found that 34% of firefighters in those small communities are 50 or older — up from 15.9% in 1987.

Here are a few examples of what that situation looks like in Grant County:

• Three of the nine active volunteers on the Long Creek Fire Department are 60 or older. Chief Don Porter is 63.

• Marvin Rynearson joined the Prairie City Fire Department at the age of 16 in 1968. Today, at the age of 69, he’s the chief.

• Ron Phillips also became a volunteer firefighter in 1968, signing on with the John Day Fire Department. Now, more than half a century later, he’s still going out on fire calls. He’s 71.

That’s right: Many of the folks who answer the siren’s call at all hours of the day or night, who put on 40 to 80 pounds of protective gear and put their lives on the line to protect our homes and businesses from the flames, are grandparents.

It’s not easy to be a volunteer firefighter. You need to be able to leave work on a moment’s notice to go out on a call. You need to be willing to attend regular department meetings, spend time cleaning and maintaining equipment and devote 70 or 80 hours a year to meet training requirements. And you need to be ready, if need be, to put your own safety at risk to protect your neighbors.

But somebody, we can all agree, has to do it. So where are the young people who are ready, willing and able to step up and fill the thinning — and aging — ranks of our volunteer fire departments? Grant and Harney counties have traditionally held a joint training academy for new recruits, but the last two years they had to cancel because they couldn’t reach the minimum threshold of five trainees.

Thankfully, some people are bucking this disturbing trend. One of them is 18-year-old Zachary Shoop, who joined the John Day Fire Department in December.

“We help people during their worst times,” he told the Eagle’s Rick LaMountain. “If people are interested in giving back to the community and helping those who need it most, they should get involved.”

We hope some of you reading this will take Zachary’s message to heart. If you think you might be able to help, call your local fire department and volunteer.

Fire departments throughout Grant County are struggling to maintain adequate levels of volunteers. If you’d like to help in some capacity, whether by fighting fires or just answering phones, contact your local fire department:

Canyon City

123 S. Washington St.

(541) 575-0509

Dayville

2 Park Lane

(541) 987-2188

John Day

316 S. Canyon Blvd.

(541) 620-4037

Long Creek

250 Hardisty St.

(541) 421-3601

Monument

291 Main St.

(541) 934-2025

Mt. Vernon

472 Council Drive

(541) 932-4688

Prairie City

142 SW Kilbourne St.

(541) 820-3605