The Fire Department also has a total of ten ambulances, seven full-time and four reserved, available for emergency response and staffed by certified paramedics. The Department is also equipped with specialized hazmat, dive, swift water, and confined space teams ready to assist. A total of eight engines, two aerial trucks, two command vehicles, one air supply vehicle, two quints, an EMS supervisor, and one arson investigator are available for response from these ten stations.
These stations are currently staffed 24 hours a day with sixty-eight personnel on-duty who respond to emergencies from two double-company stations and eight single company stations. In 1886, the first volunteer fire company was established in the city. While Tallahassee developed as a city, firefighting was a community effort ranging from 'bucket brigades' to hand and horse-drawn wagons. Since the completion of the first permanent fire station in 1949 located at 321 West Main Street, our city has developed a total of ten fire stations. The City of Tallahassees Fire Department has been fighting fires and responding to emergencies for more than 100 years. Beginning in 1917 as a volunteer organization and progressing to 1945 when the first paid firefighter became employed by the city of Grand Prairie, our agency has grown to the current staffing level of 230 paid members and seven volunteers. The Grand Prairie Fire Department has been in existence for one hundred years.
