A few questions remain, but three fire officers laid off when WSU closed its fire department in 2005 are back at work in their previous positions.

“It looks like it’s going to work out OK,” fire officer David Grimes said.

Without a campus fire station to return to, their jobs will look a little different. While they have the same “fire officer” title and job description, their set of duties within that description will have a different emphasis.

Grimes and Terry St. Mary will work from the Rec Center under director Kathleen Hatch, where their duties will include running first aid and CPR classes, assisting with emergency medical calls and doing other work related to fire training and prevention.

Stuart Bennett will assist campus fire marshal Rod Holmes out of the Public Safety Building with building inspections, drills and alarm testing, and other fire education.

The three learned of these assignments at a meeting Monday morning with Rich Heath, associate vice president of Business and Finance, and representatives from Human Resource Services.

“The meeting went fine,” Heath said. “I thought we had a good discussion.” He said the fire officers brought up a few good logistical questions about the transition, and he’s working to get those answers.

“They’re working on all the questions we had for them,” Grimes said.

Grimes said it was a pleasant meeting, and he felt WSU was attentive to their concerns. They will receive back pay and all benefits as if they had worked 35 months they were laid off.

“For the most part things look pretty good,” he said.

St. Mary said he can’t be quite as diplomatic.

“Personally, this is a cheap way for them to get out of this deal,” he said.

He said it’s not a bad deal, and not worth fighting anymore, but he’s frustrated he won’t be fighting fires. He hopes he’ll do more with fire prevention than first aid.

St. Mary and his family will move back from Ephrata to the Colfax area. He plans to finish out the six years he has left until retirement.

The three men filed with the state Personnel Appeals Board for wrongful layoffs in June 2005. WSU decided to comply with the original June 2006 ruling ordering reinstatement of the fire officers after a state appeals court decision in March denied the university’s second request to review the ruling. Grimes said he is disappointed the university did not consider bringing the whole fire department back, since it served a valuable purpose for campus safety and training students to be leaders in the firefighting profession. However, he is enthusiastic about getting his job back and having the long process resolved.

“Hopefully we’re coming to an end with this,” Grimes said, “and we’ll go back to work and enjoy our jobs.”