The Hermiston DMV was closed for a day it would ordinarily be open.

Posted hours on the front door are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Still, the doors were locked at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 28. A sign on the door Thursday explained the reason.

“This office is closed due to staffing,” the sign read. Also, it guided people to the DMV website, oregondmv.com, for more information, and it notified visitors to check their email for more information if they had scheduled appointments.

The DMV website stated the Hermiston and Heppner offices were both closed Thursday. There was no further mention about when they would reopen.

Upset people at the doorPeople were frustrated as they arrived at the Hermiston DMV and found the doors locked.

“I came a long ways to come here, and now it’s not even open,” Sarah Krebs, of Ione, said. She had wanted to update her driver’s license.

She said her license was set to expire on her birthday, Sunday, May 1, and she would need to update it by then.

The Pendleton DMV was open, according to the DMV website, and Krebs said she would try it, as she got back into her vehicle and left.

Another disappointed person, Dominick Giefing, had been waiting in front of the Hermiston building, located at 810 S. Highway 395.

He said he had been at the office the day prior but was not able to get his driver’s license because he had forgotten his eyeglasses.

“This is the biggest inconvenience ever,” he said. “They should be open. DMVs don’t help people. They just make their lives harder.”

His mother, Mina Edwards, was sitting in her vehicle out in front of the DMV with her son. They are both from Ione.

She said they had been through a lot of bureaucracy on the road to get Giefing’s license. She had tried the DMV’s customer service phone number, but had not received help after half an hour of being kept on hold.

“It’s been an unfortunate nightmare whirlwind,” she said.

Problem remains after reopeningOn Friday, April 29, the Hermiston DMV reopened. As the Heppner office is ordinarily closed on Fridays, it was not open then.

“We’re suffering across the state,” David House, DMV spokesman, said. He called the situation “critical,” stating that the DMV is receiving a fraction of the job applications it had in previous years.

People are retiring or leaving for other jobs, and not enough new applicants are stepping in to fill open positions, he said. The Medford office is at half its regular staff, and offices like the Hermiston office, which he said operates with two or three workers, can shut down when a single person gets sick and has to stay home.

There are 60 offices statewide, and many of them are staffed by two or three employees, like the Hermiston office, he said.

He added that all of the Oregon Department of Transportation is facing this problem, not just the DMV.

House recommended that people in need of services visit the DMV website to see if they can be helped that way.