Growing up in Willamina, Dan Eddy learned plenty about firefighting. It was natural with a father who served as a volunteer fire chief in the small logging town situated on the border of Polk and Yamhill counties about an hour north of Philomath.
“I grew up with the fire siren in the background,” Eddy said. “The phone in my house growing up had a button on it to turn the siren on … this was before pagers, before radios.”
Eddy started volunteering for the fire department at age 16 and went into firefighting for a career. On Dec. 1, he was installed as Philomath Fire and Rescue’s operations chief, a move that occurred in conjunction with the retirement of Rich Saalsaa.
“It’s kind of a changing role from when Rich was in that position — he had more of the fire marshal-type stuff,” Eddy said. “In this role, it’s more focused on what’s going on on the ground — shifts, crews, making sure that the facilities and equipment are up and running, and working with the volunteers.”
Eddy, 52, formerly served as a fire management officer for the Bureau of Land Management’s Northwest Oregon District. He started volunteering with Philomath Fire and Rescue in March 2021.
The operations chief title is new to the Philomath Fire and Rescue team. Prior to Eddy securing the position, the duties had been spread out among other personnel, such as the fire chief and three lieutenants. Saalsaa’s deputy fire chief role had several responsibilities.
“We’re redistributing and still trying to figure all those pieces out,” Eddy said.
As mentioned, Eddy’s childhood exposure to firefighting certainly had its impacts. In addition to his father, Eddy’s maternal grandfather also served as a volunteer fire chief and had a position as a deputy state fire marshal.
Eddy credits his grandfathers and the town where he grew up for the interest that he developed in not only firefighting, but serving his community.
“You know, if you live somewhere, you give back. That ethic was pushed into me from a very young age,” Eddy said. “Both of my grandfathers were in that role — one was fire chief and the other was the mayor of the town. So I had those pushes, and then growing up in a small logging town … my family had a logging company in the late ’80s, early ’90s and with everything else going on, I got a little push to do something different.”
Eddy feels a strong connection to the Philomath vicinity through his family history. His paternal grandfather, Francis Eddy, spent part of his childhood in Hoskins and Kings Valley. In fact, his descendants were the founders of Eddyville.
A constant for Eddy through his younger years was volunteering for fire departments. He started with the Willamina Fire District in 1988 and through the years, he had stops in places like Burns, Hines, Milton-Freewater and Enterprise.
“My paid job all those years was as a wildland firefighter with the federal government in different stints,” he said. “So I’ve kind of been doing both worlds all along.”
After earning a degree in fire science from Chemeketa Community College in 1992, Eddy said it was tougher back then to go right into a paid firefighter position with a lot of competition for those jobs.
“So I started doing wildland (firefighting) to pay the bills and to get some experience,” he said. “That led me into the wildland side of things and I progressed up from a firefighter to an engineer to a captain and ended up retiring from the BLM when I came to this job.”
Eddy is one of nine paid staff at Philomath Fire and Rescue. In addition to career personnel, the district also has five resident volunteers and according to year-end statistics, 23 other volunteers that contribute to the department.
The district has gone through a few rough stretches with attracting volunteers over the years but Eddy said things are currently looking good in that part of the operation.
“We just did a large push and accepted into the process 10 new volunteers so they’ll have to go through the academy,” Eddy said. “We’ve had a lot of people reach out and are interested. So we have kind of an interesting dynamic of some experienced folks and then a bunch of new folks coming in.”
Eddy comes into the position at a time when Philomath Fire and Rescue is seeing more calls than ever on a year-to-year basis. The district finished 2024 with 1,095 calls — up 7.9% from the previous year and 105.8% more than a decade ago.
“I’m getting a feel for the position and looking at what our needs are as the department in five years, 10 years — where’s the community going to be, what will be the community’s needs?” Eddy said when asked about what he sees with the job in the future. “Making sure that our folks are staffed, our equipment’s in good shape, our facilities are in good shape and making sure we’re providing the right services for the community.”
