Pendleton Fire & Ambulance Chief Jim Critchley is retiring at the end of October after four years leading the department.
“I have mixed feelings. I’m really going to miss the people,” Critchley said. “I’ve been with the 31st largest fire department in the nation and now I’ve been with one of the smaller fire departments in the nation. I’ve represented fire chiefs all over the world. I would put the people associated with the Pendleton Fire Department on par with any I’ve come across.”
Critchley grew up in Southern Arizona and first joined the fire service in Tucson. He is not someone who grew up planning to be a firefighter. Critchley’s road to the fire service started with a job as a bartender and a conversation with three customers.
“Three guys sat at the bar. They told great stories, always had pretty girls, and I said, ‘I want to do what you guys do,’ and they said they worked for the fire department and asked if I’d like to join them. I did, and I loved it,” Critchley said.
Critchley was working full time as a firefighter in 1984. In 1988, he was hired by Tucson Fire Department as a firefighter, and he worked his way up the ladder.
Critchley became the Fire Chief of the Tucson Fire Department in 2011, overseeing 643 full-time personnel and 133 civilian employees. After seven years in the chief role – and 29 years with the department – Critchley retired in 2017 to spend time with his family and to focus on his health.
“I thought I could retire, but within a month, I had another job,” Critchley said with a laugh. “It was basically a sales job, but I wasn’t as good at selling stuff as I wanted to be.”
A few years later, the Western Fire Chiefs Association contacted Critchley and said they had an opening for an interim chief in Pendleton, Oregon. Critchley was hired as the interim fire chief in August 2019 and was sworn in as the full-time chief in January 2020.
“I came to Pendleton because the Western Fire Chiefs asked me to help out. What made me stay is the people in this fire department, the people in the community, and the city manager who does the right things for the right reasons,” Critchley said.
Critchley said the thing he will miss the most is the people. What he won’t miss is the emotional weight of the position.
“There are 17,000 people in Pendleton that are counting on their fire department to show up every day,” he said. “When you’re running a business, running a department, running a city, there is this never-ending pressure to take care of the people that are working. It’s always there. I care about when firefighters get hurt. I care about the patients that we go to. I feel that, and it tends to weigh on you.”
Critchley is retiring at the end of October in order to complete a move to Arizona in time to spend the holidays with his family. Assistant Fire Chief Tony Pierotti will take over when Critchley leaves office.
