Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department

The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department (JFRD) is the agency that provides fire protection and emergency medical services for Jacksonville, Florida. The department also serves all unincorporated areas of Duval County.

JFRD is one of the largest fire and rescue departments in Florida and the 14th largest in the United States, servicing metropolitan, suburban and rural areas that encompass an area of approximately 840 square miles with a population of more than 850,000. It comprises six divisions: Operations, Rescue, Training, Fire Prevention, Administrative Services and Emergency Preparedness. These divisions control the functions of 57 Fire and Rescue locations including two (2) marine companies, a Special Operations and Technical Rescue team, two Hazardous Materials (HazMat) Teams, 30 Advanced Life Support transport units, 25 Advanced Life Support engine companies, a USAR team and other specialty teams. The department has a professional career force of approximately 1300 diverse men and women. JFRD is one of the premier fire organizations in the country.

Notable accomplishments of the JFRD are:
 * 1) Establishing the first Hazardous Materials team in 1977;
 * 2) Becoming the first major city to fund a pre-hospital emergency care system, better known as rescue service;
 * 3) Becoming the first fully accredited local emergency management program in the nation;
 * 4) Establishing one of the first Advanced Life Support (ALS) services in the nation;
 * 5) Becoming the first fire department to successfully extinguish a fully involved petroleum tank fire.

History of the JFRD
Around 1850, the city’s first fire fighting efforts involved digging wells and stockpiling ladders and other equipment at three intersections. A five-story tower was built over the well at Newnan and Adams streets and a fire bell was mounted at the top. In case of fire, someone would run for the bell while yelling "fire." The commotion would bring out the men folk who would form lines to pass water buckets from the wells to the fire. Shortly thereafter, the city acquired its first fire fighting apparatus, a manual pump with handles on each side for pumping, but it was destroyed by the flames of a big fire in 1854.

The city's first organized volunteer fire fighting force formed on Jan. 10, 1868, when the Friendship Hook and Ladder Company began providing fire protection. Several other volunteer companies formed by 1870 to become part of the Jacksonville Volunteer Fire Department. The city provided little support to the volunteers, who often fought each other in the streets over access to fire hydrants while the buildings burned. The organizations gradually lost members and began to disband. A disastrous fire in December, 1885 led to the death of a volunteer firefighter. The City Council was finally convinced that a trained, paid department was necessary. On April 20, 1886, the City Council passed an ordinance establishing a paid fire department, and on July 15th, the city hired its first 20 firefighting employees. Three staffed stations and a fire chief established a legacy protecting a core city area of approximately 39 square miles. The Great Fire of 1901 started just after noon on May 3 when a cinder from a nearby chimney landed on moss and fiber drying in the sun at the Cleveland Fiber Factory at Union and Davis streets. Westerly winds of 18 mph fanned the flames, and the fire continued its’ destruction until it reached the St. Johns River. The devastation was awesome. The fire destroyed 146 city blocks and 2,368 buildings. Property damage totaled $15 million. The official death count was 7: 2 from burns, 3 from drowning and 2 from fright. Survivors questioned those numbers, saying there was no way of knowing how many people actually died in the smoke & flames, under collapsing structures or drowned in the river. All three fire stations also burned and were later rebuilt. Bricks salvaged from buildings destroyed in the fire were used to construct the stations.
 * Station 1 was located on Forsyth Street at Pine Street (now known as Main Street).
 * Station 2 was located at Pine and Ashley Streets.
 * Station 3 was located in the 500 block of East Bay Street.
 * Station 1 was rebuilt at Adams and Ocean streets.
 * Station 2 was rebuilt at the same location.
 * Station 3 was rebuilt on Catherine Street near its original location.

Station 3 became known as the Catherine Street station, housing a new 1902 American LaFrance Steam Engine and staffed by four African-American firefighters. Records are unclear, but one of the first Jacksonville Fire Department firefighters to die in the line of duty was an African-American by the name of Henry J. Bradley. The Catherine Street Fire Station is registered with the Jacksonville Historical Society and with the Northeast Florida African-American Historical Society and is on the National Register of Historic Places The station was relocated to Metropolitan Park in 1993, where it now serves as the department's Fire Museum.

Rescue begins
In 1962, Jacksonville Assistant Fire Chief James Dowling, Jr., began a crusade to end the practice of using hearses from funeral homes to provide ambulance service for the city. He argued that the funeral homes were more concerned with having funerals than with providing prompt transportation of the sick and injured to the hospital. When there were several people injured in the same incident, it was not uncommon for the different funeral home ambulance drivers to fight over getting the more severely injured person to transport, figuring they'd have the edge to get the funeral business if the person died. The issue came to a junction in February, 1967. The funeral home operators told the city fathers that they could no longer provide ambulance service, saying they had failed to get paid. The fire department responded by immediately renting emergency vehicles to fill the need.

The late James A. Dowling Jr., who retired as the city's rescue chief at the end of 1978, had tried since the end of World War II to get more firefighters trained in first aid. Dowling was a paratrooper in WWII, and had seen friends die during the war due to a lack of adequate first aid knowledge. After the war ended, he returned to his job as a Jacksonville firefighter, and became the volunteer director of first aid for the American Red Cross in Jacksonville. Over the next 39 years taught first aid and CPR to thousands of people. Dowling, who was considered by many to be the father of Jacksonville's rescue system, organized a training program to prepare firefighters to respond to medical emergencies.

Finally, in November 1967, Mayor Hans Tanzler placed emergency ambulance service permanently under the jurisdiction of the Jacksonville Fire Department. The Rescue Division began with six station wagons, each staffed by a chief and two firefighters, equipped with first aid kits (mostly Band-Aids, a few rolls of gauze and improvised wooden splints) and folding Army cots for stretchers. Within a few months the department equipped and staffed six new modular transport vehicles for continuous 24-hour service. Crews soon realized that they were in over their heads due to the nature of the calls. Many emergencies were cardiac-related, so the department connected with area doctors eager to provide better training. The advanced medical training and better equipment allowed the Jacksonville Fire Department to save more lives, and Jacksonville was known as the "safest city in the world to have a heart attack."

In 1971, the Florida Legislature praised Jacksonville's rescue service as a model for the state. Two years later, they passed the state Emergency Medical Services Act, based on Jacksonville's system, that required all ambulance services to be licensed and set standards for equipment and training.