Sean C. Morgan
Doug Emmert, 54, will work his last shift at the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District on Nov. 29.
The battalion chief is retiring after 34 years.
“I started with Sweet Home in 1979,” Emmert said. “I left and went to Albany in 1985 and came back in ’91. All but about five years, I’ve been here in Sweet Home.”
He started as a volunteer in 1977 at about the age of 20, he said. “Like most people in Sweet home, it was just kind of figured you’d go to work in the woods or a mill.”
He went to work in the woods, Emmert said. He loved the summer but not the winter.
Friends Joe Mengore and Dale Miner suggested that he come and check out the department.
He did and took an immediate interest in it, Emmert said. “I think it was helping people, trying to meet people’s needs and something different every day.”
It might have been in his blood, but he didn’t know it right away.
“My dad always wanted to stop at wrecks and help,” Emmert said, adding that he didn’t want to as a youth because “I was kind of afraid of what I might see.”
But that’s what makes his job interesting now – the challenge of facing what he may have to and improvising on nearly every call, fire or medical, he said.
The work can be more difficult in a small town, like Sweet Home, he said. “I grew up here. A lot of people I see in their worst times – I know them.”
But he’s had many of them tell him they’re glad to see him, he said, and he would never think about not working here.
“I love this community,” Emmert said. “I think it’s just a close-knit, caring community. I’ve seen so many times when people had to pull together – and this community does – something you don’t get in a bigger place.”
In Albany, it was more of a job, perhaps because people didn’t know him personally, he said.
Now, it’s time to take a break, Emmert said. The business is for younger people.
“It’s getting hard to get up in the middle of the night and function,” Emmert said. The job takes a physical toll, and he’s started feeling it.
“I want to do a little bit of traveling,” he said, although he probably won’t do that right away. His wife, Peggy, remains employed as bookkeeper at Sweet Home High School.
It’ll be weird, he believes. For 34 years, he has heard the alarm siren and wondered if enough people would show up.
He usually knows what’s going on even if he isn’t on a call, he said. It’ll be weird not knowing when he sees a fire engine go by.
The business has changed a lot since he started.
“When I came to work in 1979, the ambulance was in the Police Department,” Emmert said. “The Police Department ran a little branch of paramedics. It wasn’t until 1985, I believe, when the paramedics went into the Fire Department.”
The Fire Department had one paid official at the time, he said. It currently has 10 full-time paid staff. “They did things differently then.”
The structure of the department has changed drastically since then, Emmert said. “I think that’s really been a big plus for the community.”
The city tore down a fire station that was about to fall down and built a new one around 1995, and the formation of a district a decade ago provided stable funding, Emmert said. “We’ve worked for a long time to get decent facilities, and we’ve just gotten busier.”
When he started, there were about 400 to 500 medical and fire calls per year. This year, the department has already logged more than 2,000 calls this year.
“The equipment’s changed,” Emmert said. “Along with that, it’s gotten a lot more expensive.”
Firefighters predominantly fought fires from the outside when he started, Emmert said. Then, as breathing apparatus improved, they started moving into burning structures more often. Now, firefighter safety concerns are keeping them outside the structures again, going full circle.
“I’m definitely going to miss it, working with the people I work with,” Emmert said. “It’s a special bond being called a firefighter. When you’re not going to be one any more, it feels weird.”