KUNA, Idaho — Kuna Fire currently only has one station and struggles to keep it fully staffed, so when an emergency happens in town and crews are busy on a call — it's often Boise or Meridian firefighters who show up to help.
That's part of mutual aid agreements between departments — but Kuna currently relies heavily on that help from surrounding cities.
"The public doesn’t care what’s on our patch, they want a timely professional to help solve their problem," says Boise Fire Chief Aaron Hummel.
WATCH: Why Meridian and Boise firefighters often respond to Kuna
Hummel says mutual aid was originally intended to allow departments to share resources on large fires.
"What oftentimes is we would send a unit to another community or vice versa they would send units to us. Through the years that kind of morphed into automatic agreements, automatic aid type agreements," says Hummel.
Now the closest unit responds to life-threatening emergencies, but those mutual aid agreements haven't been all that mutual when it comes to Kuna Fire — which only has 18 firefighters and one station, which they struggle to fully staff with six firefighters.
WATCH | Kuna Fire board approves merger with Nampa to create Treasure Valley Fire District
Boise Fire in comparison has 19 stations and more than 300 personnel to serve about 300,000 neighbors.
"80-81% of the time, we're not fully staffed," said Kuna Fire Chief T.J. Lawrence at the recent Kuna-Nampa Fire merger meeting.
Lawrence explained that in 2026 they've received more than 500 instances of mutual aid from neighboring departments including Meridian, Boise, Nampa, Eagle and Star while Kuna has only been able to give aid about a dozen times.
"What’s happened in Kuna is they have one station and now they have 40,000 people they’re trying to protect and that’s very challenging for one station, so if that station is out on calls all the time — how are they going to be able to send that unit to help Meridian or Boise," said Hummel.
That's why Chief Hummel spoke at the merger meeting advocating for the consolidation.
"Mutual aid is not a good growth strategy, you need a plan for your own stations and that’s kind of what I was getting at," added Hummel.
The good news for those neighboring departments is that the merger was approved. Kuna and Nampa Fire will soon share resources and staffing, meaning they should become much less reliant on mutual aid.
"I think that that was an excellent decision. I think that’s good government," said Hummel.
Kuna and Nampa Fire should be completely merged into a single department starting Nov. 13, 30 days after the vote to consolidate, forming the new Treasure Valley Fire District.
