About the Tempe Fire Department

The Tempe Fire Department is a highly professional career fire department. Tempe is home to Arizona State University and has a population of 165,000. Our public department employs 181 people; 29 civilians and 152 sworn personnel. Each member is dedicated to serving the citizens of Tempe with the highest degree of care and professionalism. The role these individuals play results in effective, efficient service to the community and makes Tempe a safe place to work and raise a family.

Fire Department services include emergency medical (both basic and advanced life support), fire suppression, hazardous materials response, fire prevention, public education, and organization-wide disaster preparedness activities.

Located within Tempe's 39.89 square miles are six fire stations housing eight engine companies, two ladder companies, one scene support and one battalion chief. Each of the ladder and engine companies are constantly staffed around the clock with four firefighters.

All firefighters are certified emergency medical technicians and hazardous materials "First Responders." Several personnel are additionally certified as hazardous materials technicians and are assigned to Station #2 where our hazardous materials response van is located and equipped with the necessary equipment to respond to advanced level hazardous materials emergencies.

In 2008 we responded to a total of 18,873 calls; 2,414 fires, 15,191emergency medical calls, 213 special operations calls, and 1,055 other emergency responses. 

Currently our average emergency response time is 5 minutes 32 seconds (from dispatch to arrival). All lighted intersections are equipped with traffic signal preemption, which allows fire vehicles to control traffic signals during emergency response. Our department, in conjunction with Phoenix Fire Department, utilizes GPS that allows us to dispatch the closest unit to an incident. This technology pinpoints fire trucks to within ten feet of their actual location, thereby providing the quickest response to citizens in our system. Our Five Year Plan provides for one additional fire station be strategically placed to further assist in accomplishing our emergency response time goal of five minutes or less 75% of the time.

Tempe Fire Department is proud of their public/private partnership with Arizona Public Service Company (APS), an electrical utility company, which enabled the construction of a state-of-the-art fire training center on the grounds of the Ocotillo Power Plant. The Tempe/APS Joint Fire Training Center provides training for firefighters for both Tempe and APS firefighters. The partnership allowed for 8.07 acres of land be provided by Arizona Public Service and the site improvements, construction of building and training props, and furnishings be provided by the City of Tempe. Special features of the training center include a classroom/office building; two-story burn building which produces non-toxic artificial smoke and uses a natural gas heat simulator; four-story training tower with moveable walls; drafting pit for pumper testing and apparatus operator training; driver training course with skid pad; trench rescue and confined space rescue props; roof ventilation props - both pitched and flat roofs; automobile accident extrication area; electrical props including both ground and pole-mounted transformers; and liquid petroleum gas and natural gas training props.