Volunteer firefighters have long been a vital part of KCFD7, and they remain essential to our ability to deliver effective service to the community. Like many rural Districts, we face significant recruitment and retention challenges that directly affect public safety. With a District population of approximately 7,000 residents, our volunteer pool is limited, and many current volunteers balance full‑time employment or other commitments that reduce their availability for emergency response.

In 2025, KCFD7 responded to more than 850 calls, placing substantial strain on our limited workforce and affecting both responder safety and the overall effectiveness of our emergency operations, commitment to provide public education and prevention activities, and emergency support. 

Our community includes retired residents, individuals who commute outside the District for work, and young families, all of which reinforce the need to strengthen our staffing model. To maintain reliable, timely emergency response, it is critical that we retain and train our existing volunteers in best practices, actively recruit new volunteers, and continue expanding our career firefighter ranks to ensure consistent coverage.

Upper Kittitas County’s Fire Districts rely heavily on mutual and automatic aid, and KCFD7 is a key partner in supporting all neighboring Upper County Fire Organizations that border KCFD7. Through these automatic and mutual aid agreements, and in coordination with state and federal partners such as the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), KCFD7 routinely deploy apparatus and personnel for structure and wildland fires across the region. Fast‑moving fires along major travel corridors pose significant risk, making strong regional cooperation essential.

KCFD7 operates in the urban‑wildland interface, where dry conditions, winds, and diseased timber can rapidly turn small fires into major incidents. Wildfires frequently ignite along the interstate due to heavy recreation traffic, making rapid, well‑staffed initial attack critical to containing fire spread.

To protect lives and property, we must maintain adequate career staffing and a strong pool of trained volunteer firefighters. Without sufficient personnel and effective local fire agency partnerships, the community faces heightened risk and reduced emergency response capability.

I-90 is one of the major U.S. West–East Interstate highways with 31,000 vehicles and commercial trucks (10+ million yearly) through the KCFD7’s response area daily en route to other destinations each year. In addition to the 19 miles of I-90 we cover, KCFD7 covers approximately 20 miles along SR-970, extending to SR-97 up to the top of Blewett Pass. This accounts for many collisions, extrications, and accident responses during the busy summer weekends and snow-covered winter months. 

During the summer, fire response to car and recreation vehicles, commercial trucks, grass, and wildfires are frequent as I-90, state highways, and recreational areas pass through the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest. These external impacts of I-90, state highways, and the recreational regions have immediate proximity to start forest fires and raise our needs for fire protection services to a very high level.

 The Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest surrounds KCFD7 on three sides, creating a unique Wildland Urban Interface. Recent state and national responses, such as the Jolly Mountain and Taylor Bridge Fires, have dramatically highlighted the area’s fire hazard, which places our community at high risk.

This makes our need to maintain and increase our career staffing so critical. Our local fire crews are ALWAYS the first responders for an initial attack on forest and wildland fires within our immediate response area. Without them, there would be no emergency response to the freeways, our residents, or the surrounding forest lands. While the forest service and state Department of Natural Resources have wildland fire crews, they must respond from far away or be tied up on another fire which is very common at the peak of fire season.