Call To Duty: Dufur Volunteers risk life and limb for neighbors
Jon Jr. Keyser gets pinned with 5 Bugles by his Dad, Jon Keyser at the annual dinner at the Dufur Volunteer Fire and Ambulance Hall on June 26. Retiring Chief Jack Frakes looks on at center.
By Tom Peterson
Take a look at the photo above.
These people have been through a lot together.
Burned over, gunshot wounds, fighting wildfires that can turn on a dime in tinder-dry wheat fields.
Sabrina Kittleson pins Assistant Chief Brian Kittelson at the Dufur fire hall on June 26th.
So it was proper they took a day to recognize their best recently at their annual dinner held at the Dufur Volunteer Fire and Ambulance hall.
The dinner was on June 26th and the night marked the retirement of Chief Jack Frakes and the installation of Jon Keyser Jr.
Three chiefs stood together in one room amassed in the decades-long history of helping people in need of medical care and protecting farms and homes from fire.
It goes without saying in Dufur; residents chip in to build a better community.
Resources can be tight. It takes volunteers to make the difference between life and death or stopping a small fire from becoming a conflagration.
On June 26th, Keyser Jr. was given the 5-Bugle pin by his father Jon, signifying his rank as Chief.
He’s just 23.
And he has been with his dad at the fire station since he was a little kid.
Frakes had served as chief since 2008 before retiring in March. He had several major fires - conflagrations - under his belt. He was also named EMT of the year in the State of Oregon.
The elder Keyser preceded Frakes as chief, wearing the boots from 2001 to 2008 in his 26-years of volunteering.
So it was pretty significant when he could pin his son.
“Exciting,” Keyser said. “Let me show you.”
He went to his phone and pulled a photo up from 18 years ago.
It’s of Jon Jr. at age 6 and him standing next to the Dufur fire engine. The next photo he shows is of them standing next to the same engine but Jon Jr. is 19 and a firefighter.
It seems the younger Keyser was destined for the job.
Jon Jr. and his Dad were out on Pleasant Ridge when he was 13, his dad, 41.
They were in his Dad’s pickup spotting for fire as lightning was striking all around.
“Lighting struck 50 yards behind us,” Jon said.
“It rattled the crap out of the pickup,” Jon Jr. said.
The strike sent a grass fire running up a hillside. “And that’s when it hooked me.”
At 16, Jon Jr. officially joined the department. And by 2018 he was headlong into major conflagrations or “mega-fires” as they drew him into harm's way.
That summer, the third in a trilogy of blazes that scorched Wasco County, burned some 78,000 acres south of Dufur. Officially called the Long Hollow Fire, it lit off on July 26.
Jon Jr. was fighting the blaze near Center and Tygh ridge roads near Easton Canyon. The fire was burning in standing wheat during the ‘witching hour’ - 3 to 5 pm when humidity dips to single digits and temps go above 100 degrees. Fire is erratic and savage in such conditions.
A fast shift in the wind changed everything.
“I turned around and there was a 30-foot wall of flames,” Jon Jr. said. “I was burned over twice in less than three hours.”
Jon Jr. got extreme smoke inhalation and had trouble breathing.
He was seeing stars.
He sought refuge in his pickup, only to have the AC die and vents bring in smoke from the exterior.
He and his crew had to make it 3 miles back to where Jon Jr. could get medical help. A small bottle of oxygen in a medical jump kit was all he had to keep him breathing.
He would soon need more.
At the same time, his Dad was called out on an ambulance run that day when word hit that a firefighter was in trouble.
In the ambulance, he made way for the command post at Easton Canyon when someone slipped the name on the radio.
It was his own son that was in trouble.
Jon had to wait there as Jon Jr. was brought out through the smoke and flames, some long dark minutes.
When he finally arrived they put him on oxygen in the ambulance and took him to Mid-Columbia Medical Center where he recovered.
It would be a little less than a year later that Jon Jr. would return the favor to his dad.
In the winter of 2019, the elder Keyser had driven four miles west from Dufur and was shooting targets with his .45 when the handgun locked.
It went from semi-automatic to full auto, loading the chamber with more shells than it could handle in a fraction of a second.
Keyser said he moved his shooting hand up after it happened and he stumbled backward, hitting a rock with his boot and falling.
The gun quit firing, but when Jon went to get up he looked down at his shirt. He could see it filling with blood. He looked in the side-view mirror of the pickup. Shrapnel from the bullets had pierced his ear, his right cheek and multiple other spots on his face. He also thought he was be bleeding from under his chin.
He called Jon Jr.
“I knew something was wrong,” Jon Jr. said. “He called me and said, ‘Jon, I had an accident with my gun.’”
The phone line was really scratchy and then it just dropped.
“I knew it was serious because he called me Jon,” Jon Jr. said.
Jon Jr. called 911 and called out for an ambulance as he knew where his dad was at.
Problem was, Jon had driven a foot out in the snow and the ambulance would get stuck trying to get to him.
He would have to meet the ambulance.
He grabbed a blue chamois drying towel and got in his pickup and used it to soak up the blood coming from his face as he drove toward the Dufur Valley Grange Hall.
Jon Jr. said he could see his Dad racing toward them in his blue pickup.
When the older Keyser got out, it did not look good as he was covered in blood and the chamois was also filled.
“We got him in the back of the ambulance,” Jon Jr. said. “That’s when I lost my cool.”
With the aid of several Wasco County deputies, Jon was taken to mid-Columbia Medical Center where they stitched him back together and removed shrapnel from his face.
He still has a piece lodged in the right side of his face to this day.
“Makes it tough to get an MRI,” he said dryly.
“There is always a little excitement somewhere,” Jon Jr. said. “And we seem to find it.”
Of fighting fire and protecting neighbors Jon said they did their best, but noted there was suffering in a lot of it.
“It’s not always the best situation,” Jon said. “But we always try to make it come out for the good.”
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Retired Dufur Fire Chief Jack Frakes receives recognition for his years of service at the annual dinner held on June 26th.
