Dufur celebrates new fire station

The property for the new station was purchased by the city in 2006, according to Jon Keyser, who first volunteered with the department in 1993 and served as fire chief from 2002 through 2008, at which time Jack Frakes was appointed fire chief.

In 2014 a water tender was purchased for the city by Hal and Hilarie Miller of the Joyce Miller Owens Charitable Foundation at a cost of $84,000.

The foundation first proposed building a new fire station for the city at that time, Keyser said.

“I thought to myself, ‘am I hearing this right?’” Keyser remembers thinking when the proposal was made.

“This is something that we had been fighting for a long time,” he explained.

Keyser was appointed to oversee the project, and worked with designing the structure.

“A lot of thought went into this,” Keyser said. “We had to make sure that we could fit all of our apparatus in there, plus offices, a training room, restrooms, laundry, a break room and room for future expansion.”

The building was designed and constructed, and the department was handed the keys to the new station June 6.

“The amazing thing is that this structure, and all the improvements to this half city block, were 100 percent paid for with private money from the Joyce Miller Charitable Foundation,” Keyser said. “No public money was used to construct our new facility.” The station is manned by volunteers.