Ketchum Fire Department
Ketchum, ID
The Ketchum Fire Department was established in 1883 and today boasts 45 members – 11 paid employees and 34 volunteers. They are firefighters, paramedics, advanced EMTs, and basic EMTs.
“We do everything,” says Mike Elle, chief of Fire and Emergency Medical Services. “Structural and wild land fires, swift water rescue, cold water rescue, high angle rescue, confined space rescue, extrication, avalanche rescue, you name it.”
Partnership is vital in this remote area, and the Fire Department is part of the Wood River Sawtooth Region EMS Association, a non-profit organization made up of 35 emergency responder groups in Blaine, Camas, and Custer counties. Members range from the Salmon River Clinic in Stanley to the Galena Nordic Ski Patrol to Camas County EMS in Fairfield.
The bulk of the Ketchum Fire Department’s calls are recreation-related, covering the City of Ketchum and the Ketchum Rural Fire District. In 2008 alone, they responded to four avalanches in one day, a bear in the city limits, a skier buried in an avalanche, backcountry rescues of an injured mountain biker and a hunter with chest pain, and a major fire that destroyed three businesses in downtown Ketchum.
