Peoria Fire Department

Peoria Fire-Medical traces its roots to 1920, when local business leaders organized the Peoria Fire Protection District after a 1917 blaze destroyed much of the city's downtown business district. The district ran on borrowed and then donated equipment (its first purchased apparatus was a 1922 Ford Model T pumper) until the City of Peoria incorporated in 1954 and stood up an all-volunteer fire department. The department didn't hire its first full-time firefighters until 1980, and has grown alongside the city ever since into a fully paid, career municipal department.

Today the department is organized into four divisions - Administration, Fire Prevention, Training, and Operations - under a single Fire Chief. The Operations Division runs eight paramedic-staffed pumpers and two ladder trucks equipped for technical rescue work including swift water, trench, confined space, and high-angle rescue, alongside a dedicated wildland team and a fire boat for water response on the city's lakes. Fire Prevention handles inspections, plan review, permitting, and fire-cause investigations, while community outreach covers CPR classes, school visits, station tours, smoke-alarm installs, and the juvenile fire-setter program. The department also runs a flat-rate EMS/fire subscription program for residents of the Pinnacle Peak County Island, an unincorporated area it serves outside city limits.

Peoria Fire-Medical maintains an active pre-employment pipeline through its Cadet Program, a volunteer track for candidates 18 and older who already hold an Arizona EMT certification, aimed at preparing participants for full-time firefighter hiring in Peoria or elsewhere in the Valley. Sworn firefighter hiring itself runs through periodic recruitment windows announced on the department's site and staffed through an external public-safety hiring portal.

Peoria Fire-Medical hires firefighters through periodic recruitment windows (the department has previously announced roughly month-long application windows in the January-February timeframe) rather than a continuously open req, with applications handled through an external public-safety hiring portal (publicsafetyanswers.com/peoria) rather than the city's general HR job board. The department encourages prospective applicants to follow its social media and bookmark its recruitment page for announcements of new windows. Separately, the department's Cadet Program accepts applications on a rolling basis for candidates at least 18 years old who hold an Arizona EMT certification, offering hands-on training, weekly fitness workouts, and interview coaching as a pathway toward a future firefighter career with Peoria or another department.