The radio calls are starting to make him jump.

That was a sign that it’s time to retire, said Larry Behrens, chief of the Los Pinos Fire Protection District,

He’s been mulling the prospect for awhile, anyway. The lure of working on his 30 acres in Oxford and travelling with his wife was starting to appeal more and more. He also wants to spend some more time with their 12 grandkids, especially durings his granddaughter’s senior year of playing volleyball at Ignacio High School,

Behrens joined Los Pinos in 1991 as a volunteer, then was named interim chief, and permanently to the position, in 2001.

So that’s 25 years with the district and 15 years as chief.

Behrens said he’s enjoyed it immensely, but he believes it’s time to move on. The district will start a search for a new chief next week, and he plans to retire in August. Deputy Chief Tom Aurnhammer also has announced his retirement, but said he will stay on until a new boss is named.

“That chapter is done,” Behrens said, looking at his office overflowing with firefighter memorabilia. “I’m ready to start a new one.”

Behrens has overseen vast changes at Los Pinos. It was founded in 1985 and had only one paid staff member, Chief Lester McCoy. Everyone else was a volunteer.

Today Los Pinos covers 325 square miles. Demand for service has grown from 200 calls per year to more than 1,500. Behrens oversaw the district merger with the Ignacio Volunteer Emergency Service in 2005, which provided ambulance transportation in the area, as well as the district’s expansion to cover another 100 square miles of territory in Allison and Arboles, and a new station constructed there in 2005.

Behrens said just getting from one end of the district to the other can be a challenge – it stretches 40 miles from end to end.

It also covers a lot of open space, consisting of Southern Ute Tribal Lands, Bureau of Land Management property, territory belonging to the U.S. Forest Service, Division of Wildlife areas, and land owned by the State of Colorado.

“We have five people working per shift,” Behrens said. “Sometimes that seems like too many, but on days where your tails are being handed to you, it’s not enough.”

Like in many rural districts, most of the calls are for medical service. It’s about 70 percent of the calls answered by the district. In two minutes, his staff can have three ambulances on the road. Another 10 percent of calls are for wildland fires.

The new chief will have opportunities but challenges, as well, Behrens said. Fire districts across the country are starting to shift from simply delivering sick or injured patients to emergency rooms. They work more with residents on preventing accidents and helping them get home health care so problems are handled before they become emergencies.

“It’s a change in the way to do business,” he said.

He thinks the district will continue to work more closely with the Upper Pine and Durango fire districts to share staff and avoid duplication of services.

One of the biggest challenges he leaves is financial. Los Pinos depends on oil and gas property taxes more than other districts, and with the downturn in gas prices, district revenues will be down $1 million in 2017. There are enough reserves to cover the shortfall for now, but at some point, if gas prices don’t go up, the district will have to cut services, he predicted.

“Taxpayers will have to choose the level of service they want to pay for,” he said.

Behrens took a somewhat unusual route to becoming a fire chief. He was a farmer, carpenter and pastor at Assembly of God in Ignacio when he decided to volunteer for the department. Having a financial background in overseeing church budgets, he became interim chief.

In a way, Behrens said he continued to pastor people, just in a different way.

“I was still caring for people,” he said.

That care ran the other way, as well. In 2008, while on a backcountry trip with his sons, he was injured in a horse accident. It took hours for emergency personnel to get to their remote location. He said he knew the internal injuries weren’t too bad, and his sons helped him from going into shock.

While in the hospital, one of the area’s old farmers, Pete Phetteplace, came to visit.

“He said, ‘My fire chief got hurt, and I had to check on him,’ and later, he gave me an old fire tool called a McCloud.”

It’s kind of a rake with a blade on it for cutting. It sits in a corner of Behrens’ office, along with tons of firefighting knickknacks he said he plans to mostly give away to his fellow firefighters.

Behrens said he’s had his critics over the years along with his supporters, and most residents in the district probably fall somewhere in the middle.

“I feel I’ve done my best,” he said.