Published Tuesday, December 3, 2024, 2200 hours PT

Photo Credit: Duvall KCFD45

Photo Description: January 1, 2025, Duvall KCFD45 will contract with Eastside Fire & Rescue. Pictured (L to R): Captain Dhoore, FF DAvidson, and FF Johnson (Station 166).

Eastside Fire & Rescue Acquires Another Agency

Washington State — Another King County fire agency is joining the ranks and being gobbled up by Issaquah’s Eastside Fire & Rescue with this one being out of Duvall, known as King County Fire District #45.

EF&R is based out of Issaquah (King County), Washington, and serves multiple local cities within Issaquah, Mercer Island, Carnation, Woodinville, Sammamish, and North Bend, to name a few.

Current Service Area for EF&R

While this agency is contracted with multiple eastside Cities, the South end of Western Washington seems to be moving right along with their South King County Fire Training Consortium which appears to include King County Fire District #2, Puget Sound Fire, Eastside Fire & Rescue, South King Fire, Valley Regional Fire Authority, Renton Regional Fire Authority and Kirkland Fire.

Other Fire Agencies

Living in Skagit County, we’d love to see more smaller agencies combine but some folks have said there is a downside and residents are unwilling to have their hometown agencies grow outside of their current fire districts.

Benefits of a Combined Organization

Just look at the agencies in this post and you can see the benefits outweigh the cons of having a combined fire agency. We have also heard you lose the volunteer population but we know there are several combination fire agencies here in Skagit and other counties who are just fine with this type of organization.

Through our coverage related to combined/merged agencies, we have found the benefits are higher than the cons. Here are some of the pros:

Training

Training together at one single facility not only is the best opportunity for all various fire agencies within the combined agency to share their skills, knowledge, instructors, and experience among each and every member, enables each person to be “on the same page” working together as one unit.

Training Facility

Having a single training facility, allows personnel to share the cost, and creating the perfect opportunity for all members to engage together as one.

Recruitment

Many agencies are sharing the recruitment process as if they are a single fire agency, where the candidate only has to apply “once” but can pick which agency he or she may want to be part of. That’s a great use of sharing resources, their expertise and quickly growing your Fire Family.

We are all for agencies merging and have said this many times and you’ll probably find us supporting this messaging wherever we go.

Congratulations, Eastside Fire & Rescue on gaining another group of great firefighters, support staff, and personnel to your ranks. We wish all of your guys and gals the best of luck!

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