How do you arrive at these numbers?

Nobody is responsible for keeping track of the number of firefighters; there is not a central reporting agency. (There are some self-reporting surveys such as the National Fire Experience Survey, see below.) It is difficult to track the numbers, since fire fighters can belong to one of several unions (not just the ones with “fire fighter” in their names), including the Teamsters and the unions who represent nuclear power plant personnel.

What is a career fire fighter? Do volunteer fire fighters get paid?

Career fire fighters have full-time paid benefited jobs as fire fighters. Volunteers are any other people who fight fires. They may receive no pay at all (there are about 100 volunteer departments in the state which provide no compensation at all), be paid on an hourly basis, or a per-call basis. Usually, volunteer fire fighters have jobs and careers outside of fire fighting.

How many career female firefighters are there in Minnesota?

According to the Women in the Fire Service 2005 Status Report http://www.wfsi.org/women_and_firefighting/status_report.php there were 95 women on 8 departments, including two engineers, 16 captains, amd one chief.
Minneapolis Fire Department, with 70 (17%), at the time of the report, also had the highest percentage of women firefighters in urban career departments. Other urban career departments in the United States with high percentages of female firefighters include Madison, WI (15%), San Francisco, CA (15%), Boulder, CO (14%), and Miami Dade County, FL (13%). No organization that we know of at present tracks female volunteer firefighters or female wildland firefighters.

Who oversees fire fighters in the state?

Fire protection, and the people who provide it, are local issues in the same way that street cleaning is a local issue. In other words, there is no legislatively mandated state director of street cleaners. Localities decide on their own fire protection services. The Legislature does regulate fire fighters’ pensions.

Do fire fighters get pensions? What is a relief association?

Career fire fighters are covered by the Police and Fire PERA (Public Employees Retirement Act). Volunteer fire fighters can get pensions if the fire department has organized a pension plan for them. These private, non-profit associations for volunteer fire fighter pensions are called relief associations and are managed by fire department trustees. There are over 700 relief associations in Minnesota.

How many fire fighters are there in the U.S.? (How many career, how many volunteer?)

According to estimates based on the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) U.S. Fire Department Profile through 2003 (released January 2005), there were approximately 1,096,900 fire fighters in the U.S. in 2003, a slight decrease from the previous year.

The information comes from an annual survey sent out to fire departments and a weighting formula used by NFPA in their estimate equation. In this survey, career fire fighters were defined to include full-time fire fighters regardless of assignments (e.g. suppression, prevention/inspection, administrative).

This survey defined career fire fighters who work for public municipal fire departments; it does not include career fire fighters who work for state or federal government or in private fire brigades. Career fire fighters were 27% of the total, or 296,850.

Most career fire fighters (74% of the 296,850) work in communities that protect 25,000 or more people.

The survey defined volunteer fire fighters as any active part-time (on-call or volunteer) fire fighters. Active volunteers were defined as being involved in fire fighting. Of the total number of fire fighters, 73%, or 800,050 were volunteers.

Most of the volunteers (93% of the 800,050) are in departments that protect fewer than 25,000 people. More than half of the volunteers are located in small, rural departments that protect fewer than 2,500 people.

Since 1983, a generally upward trend in career fire fighters has been more than offset by a generally downward trend in volunteer fire fighters.

How many fire departments are there in Minnesota?

There are 790 fire departments in Minnesota.

Eleven departments (Cloquet, Duluth, Minneapolis, Moorhead, Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, Richfield, Rochester, Rochester Airport, South St. Paul, St. Paul, and Virginia) are career departments.

Forty one departments are combination (some career and some paid on call members): Albert Lea, Anoka-Champlin, Austin, Bemidji, Brainerd [City], Brooklyn Park, Burnsville, Columbia Heights, Coon Rapids, Cottage Grove, Crookston, East Grand Forks, Eden Prairie, Edina, Ely, Eveleth, Faribault, Fridley, Golden Valley, Hastings, Hibbing, International Falls, Mankato, Maple Grove, Maplewood, Mdewakanton Sioux Community, North St. Paul, Owatonna, Plymouth, Red Wing, Roseville, Spring Lake Park, St. Anthony, St. Cloud, St. Louis Park, Stillwater, Thief River Falls, Waseca, West Metro Fire-Rescue District, West St. Paul, Winona.

738 departments are totally volunteer or paid on call. 

How many fire departments are there in the U.S.?

According to the NFPA’s 2002 National Fire Experience Survey, there are an estimated 30,310 fire departments in the U.S. 12% of all departments are all career or mostly career but protect 60% of the U.S. population, while 88% of the departments are mostly volunteer or all volunteer and protect 40% of the population.

• 2,044 departments (6.7%) are all career, comprised solely of career fire fighters
• 1,480 departments (4.9%) are mostly career
• 4,886 departments (16.1%) are mostly volunteer
• 21,900 departments (72.3%) are all volunteer