Former La Grande fire chief named Oregon deputy state fire marshal

Oregon put a familiar Union County fire leader into one of its top fire-safety jobs Friday when the State Fire Marshal’s Office named former La Grande Rural Fire Protection District Chief Craig Kretschmer as deputy state fire marshal. The office marked the appointment with a badge-pinning ceremony for six high-level positions, a move that places Kretschmer inside the small team helping steer wildfire readiness, inspections and fire service support across the state.

For Union County, the appointment reaches beyond ceremony. Kretschmer is not a Salem outsider arriving with no local context. The State Fire Marshal’s February newsletter said he is from La Grande, graduated from Eastern Oregon University and started his public-safety path as a general contractor while also volunteering for the City of La Grande. That background matters in a county where fire protection often depends on lean staffing, volunteer crews and long stretches of rural ground between stations.

Deputy state fire marshals inspect schools and correctional facilities, investigate fires, train fire service members and provide expertise on juvenile fire-setting cases. The Oregon State Fire Marshal says there are 26 deputy state fire marshals and four supervisors working across Oregon, so every new appointment carries weight in a system that must cover both urban and rural needs. Kretschmer’s experience in La Grande gives state leadership a direct line to the realities of Eastern Oregon, where response times, equipment availability and mutual aid can determine how quickly a fire is contained.

That local experience has already shown up in public discussions about Union County’s fire gaps. In 2022, Kretschmer described the complications of running the Union City and Union Rural fire districts out of the same station with the same crews. In 2023, he said roughly 40,000 acres in Union County were unprotected by fire districts, a stark reminder of how much land in places like Island City, North Powder, Cove and Imbler still relies on a patchwork of coverage.

His move to state service comes as Oregon is also trying to modernize rural fire protection. A report tied to House Bill 2522 said the law directed the state to create a task force to improve the structural fire protection operations of rural districts, and that group met monthly from October 2023 through August 2024. The timing is notable: in January 2026, the State Fire Marshal said an Oregon fire agency responds to a fire every 30 minutes, and fires claimed 57 lives in 2025.

Kretschmer’s appointment signals more than a promotion for one former local chief. It gives Oregon a deputy marshal who has seen firsthand how rural fire service works in Union County, where state decisions often land on volunteer stations, long drive times and communities still waiting for stronger protection.