The Division of Fire and Rescue Operations provides continuous community protection from the effects of fire and other destructive events.  It equally serves to provide professional emergency medical services for victims of sudden illness or injury.

Objectives/Capabilities

• Respond immediately to and resolve emergency incidents in a timely fashion with minimum loss of life, injuries or illness and property damage
• Control and eliminate all accidental, uncontrolled or unlawful fires; provide skilled basic and advanced life support pre-hospital emergency medical care to patients wherever they are found and during transportation to appropriate medical facilities; rescue victims from entrapment and/or other situations which threaten their lives and safety; control hazardous materials spills; and perform assigned tasks before, during and immediately following local disasters as outlined in the County Emergency Operations Plan.
• Respond promptly to all non-emergency requests for service
• Assist the Prevention and Life Safety Division in the delivery of effective, audience appropriate, fire/injury prevention and life safety public education programs to special groups and the general public
• Assist the Prevention and Life Safety Division in conducting investigations of arson and fires of unknown or suspicious origin; assist in the enforcement of the Fire Prevention Code
• Assist the Prevention and Life Safety Division in conducting fire inspections of commercial/public buildings; prepare pre-plans of commercial/public buildings in the County
• Provide emergency standbys at special events
• Develop and manage technical information
• Participate in all entry level, advanced/specialty and in-service/continuing education training for response personnel
• In coordination with the Technical Services and Special Operations Division, maintain Dive Team capabilities for water rescue, drowning and evidence recovery
• In coordination with the Technical Services and Special Operations Division, maintain specialized rescue capability for local, regional, national responses for such things as trench rescues, high angle rescues, confined space rescues, structural collapses and extensive vehicle rescues
• Provide advanced life support emergency medical capabilities from all of the County’s fire stations
• Fire and Rescue personnel are cross-trained to provide response and support at numerous types of incidents instead of just one specialty
• Maintain a well-working automatic response agreement with various neighboring jurisdictions in order to provide initial fire and EMS capabilities from the closest fire station often regardless of jurisdictional boundary. In addition, an extensive mutual aid or "backup" response system has been developed for jurisdictions to assist each other on incidents that exceed single department capabilities or resources
• Many Fire and Rescue personnel serve in additional capacities over and above their normal responsibilities. These include such items as breathing apparatus repair, small equipment maintenance and repair, management of personnel issue (uniforms, protective clothing) and map book development, to name a few.

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