“Fires and emergencies don’t care about the politics or hurt egos. We want what’s best for the people.” – Local firefighter union president Lance Tryggestad. When your house is burning, you want help — and you want it in a hurry. You don’t want fire departments to rely on a complex matrix that could be influenced by political history or professional rivalries or anything of the sort. When a house is burning, you call your nearest neighbor for help. But that’s not how we always do it in the Coulee Region. A fire last weekend in the town of Campbell has once again prompted the question of why we don’t have one regional fire department, and the time has come to sit down — in public — and figure it out.