Local fire agencies were eligible to apply. A selection committee of members from the Oregon Fire Chiefs Association, Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association, and Oregon State Fire Fighters Council reviewed applications. The review group carefully evaluated applications and made selections based on four agreed-upon principles. The principles to guide decision-making for awards included:
- Assuring statewide distribution and allocation based on local initial attack, regional mutual aid, and conflagration needs.
- Necessary infrastructure to maintain and protect the assets long term.
- Considered recent apparatus awards both from the legislature and other legislative funding sources such as wildland-urban interface and omnibus legislation.
- The ability to staff newly awarded apparatus.
Recipients will enter a contract with the OSFM to support the OFMAS to boost local, regional, and state response. This investment into the Oregon fire service will bring more resources to a stretched system.
The delivery timeline is not established because chassis are on backorder. The OSFM anticipates some deliveries to begin in 2023 through the first two quarters of 2024.
All OSFM apparatus will arrive equipped per the 2022 Oregon fire service mobilization plan for response in the wildland-urban interface. This equipment will become the property of the host agency. Apparatus must maintain appropriate equipment based on type per the mobilization plan. The apparatus may be retrofitted or modified upon request to meet agency needs.
The OSFM Engine Program is part of the agency's
Response Ready Oregon initiative. The initiative was created to help bolster capacity and modernize wildfire response within the Oregon Fire Mutual Aid System (OFMAS). The goal of Response Ready Oregon is to attack fires while they are small and keep them away from communities.
About the Program
The Oregon State Fire Marshal developed an Engine Program to purchase and strategically place new firefighting equipment across the state. Apparatus placement is based on the 2021 gap analysis survey Oregon fire service agencies participated in. The responses represented nearly every fire defense board in the state. A specification committee was formed from a diverse group of fire agencies across the state.
This program is a critical step in Oregon's re data-contrast="auto" lang="EN-US">sponse to catastrophic wildfires witnessed over the last decade - in local response, regional mutual aid, and conflagrations.
The OSFM is purchasing type 3, type 6, and tactical tenders to assist local host agencies with keeping fires small and away from communities. Host agencies will not be required to respond to statewide mobilizations, but are encouraged to, providing the OSFM apparatus are used at the local and/or regional levels.
The OSFM Engine Program funding was made possible through Senate Bill 762, Oregon's wildfire omnibus bill passed in 2021.
Timeline
- Fall 2022: application period opened
- October 2022: application period closed
- January 2023: scoring committee reviewed applications
- April 2023: awards announced
- 2023 - 2024: apparatus delivery
Links
For questions about the engine program, email
EngineProgram@osfm.oregon.gov.