How many officers does your department have?

In some departments, there are different organizational structures. A small company can have a lot of officers, and there's the large departments that have what seems to be an insufficient amount of officers due to the call volume and other stuff. How many officers does your firehouse / EMS company have (like chief-grade officers, lieutenants, safety officers, etc.)?

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Permalink Reply by Chief 29 on January 16, 2009 at 4:03pm

My company has seven officers. 3 Chiefs, 1 Captain, 1 Lieutenant, 1 Fire Police Captain, 1 Fire Police Lieutenant.
The officer in charge designates a safety officer upon arrival due to the fact that we do not have the same people show up for every call.

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Permalink Reply by Dustin on January 16, 2009 at 4:21pm

My department had 9 counting the chief.

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Permalink Reply by Dave on January 16, 2009 at 4:41pm

My city is divided in half, division 1 and division 2. Each division has a deputy who is incharge of his division. D1 has 5 district chiefs, D2 has 6 district chiefs. Each company has a captain and 3 Lt's assigned to it. One working each work group. I think we have 20 deputies, 50 DFC, 75 capt and 200 Lts. I do not undstand how small call depts have more chiefs then Lts....

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Permalink Reply by Peter Lupkowski on January 16, 2009 at 4:42pm

We have the three chiefs and a captain assigned to each fire apparatus. We run EMS with a chief and assistant and Fire Police Captain and Lieutenant. The Safety Officer is appointed and works both sides of the street. It seems like a lot on paper but the span of control is always stretched at large calls.

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on January 16, 2009 at 6:22pm

My volunteer Fire Brigade has five officers - the Captain (equal to 'Chief' in North America) and four Lieutenants. All positions elected for a two year term. Over a group of Brigades are the local Operations Officer (Battalion Chief?), the Regional Operations Manager then the Deputy Chief Fire Officer(Operations) and the Chief Fire Officer for the service (a state-wide fire service). Those that are outside my own Brigade are all career positions. Our career Stations have a Fire Officer 1 or Fire Officer 2 in charge of a shift and then the Operations Officer who is in charge of their Station. Then the higher positions.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on January 16, 2009 at 6:59pm

Chief, 1st Assistant Chief, 2nd Assistant Chief, EMS Captain, Safety Officer, Foreman, 1st Assistant Foreman, 2nd Assistant Foreman, Dive Captain

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan on January 16, 2009 at 7:26pm

Our department has 1 Chief, 1 Assistant Chief (also our Training Officer), and 3 Shift Captains. Whenever there is an emergency the IC is usually the Safety Officer aswell. So this gives us a total of 5 officers. We have 9 firefighters, so its almost a ratio of 1 officer to every 2 firefighters (1:2). On our shifts we have 1 captain and 3 firefighters on duty 24hrs a day. We used to have 3 lieutenants also, but that was back before I was with the department when they had a total of 5 on duty instead of 4 (1 capt,1 lt,& 3 firefighters.)

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Permalink Reply by Chaplain Robert A Crutchfield on January 16, 2009 at 7:45pm

We have a Chief an Assistant Chief, 2 administrative captains, 4 captains in charge different apparatus. We also have a secretary, a chaplain (me) a public information officer, and an assistant public information officer. For our department this works well since there are clearly defined boundaries of who is responsible for what. At the moment the Incident Commander on scene appoints a safety officer, but just for that incident based on who is best qualified.

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Permalink Reply by Dennis Brown on January 16, 2009 at 7:54pm

Well T.J. my old department had 6 chiefs 6 capts 6 1st lieutenants 6 2nd lieutenants and this was a town that was three sq.miles big but they are changeing the structures there my department now has 1 chief 2 deputy chiefs 2 capts 2 lieutenants