My organization recently created (for free) a website for our local, very rural, fire district. I insisted it look "professional" rather than "goth". I've noticed that photos, gifs, color schemes, etc. offered online for creators of fire department websites tend toward what I think of as less than professional - loud colors, cartoonish graphics, shock-shlock photos (my opinion I admit). Remember, I'm talking about a website meant to represent a fire department to its public, not a site like this one (firefighternation.com) that is for the fire and EMS services. Please check out our new website and let me know what you think of it. Would you want your department represented to the public with such a site or would you want something more "exciting"?
Having a good mix of Scene photo's training photos and also photo's of behind the scene's "family oriented" photo's will make your department look professional. We all profess about the brotherhood and web-site design should have considerations towards showing the lighter side of what we do.
Also, include your mission statement on the bottom of the page. Look at different photo programs that will show random photo's. Having a variety of photo's will continue to bring people to the site.