CO Fire Departments Need 2,623 New Firefighters and 753 New Rigs

Colorado’s fire departments need 2,263 new firefighters and more than $25 million to buy an estimated 753 new trucks to fight fires over the next two years, according to a report released Monday by the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control.

The division’s 2024 Colorado Fire Service Needs Assessment Survey also found that fire departments are struggling to find enough money for essential equipment and personnel. The Colorado Fire Commission is currently studying ways to better fund the state’s 340 fire departments.

“Fire service is expensive and getting all the equipment you need is difficult, especially with property taxes being reduced it makes it even more difficult,” said Lisa Pine, the state’s fire training director, who conducted the survey. “As we all know the cost of living in Colorado is very high and there has been a lot of work done to reduce how expensive it is to live here. But a consequence of that is it reduces the funding for your local fire department.”

The needs assessment also comes as Colorado’s wildfire season becomes year-round and the fires are more intense and burn more acreage.

“The workload continues to grow for the fire departments and the resources to go along with it just aren’t,” said Mike Morgan, director of the Division of Fire Prevention and Control. “We’re going to have to get creative to find solutions.”

For the 2024 survey, 57% of the state’s fire departments responded, reporting that they need:

An additional 1,121 career and 1,142 volunteer firefighters over the next two years
753 new and replacement apparatuses over the next two years
$25,282,489 over the next two years to buy needed equipment

Even while stretched thin, Colorado’s fire departments are able to respond to disasters, Pine said.

“The one thing about the fire service is no matter what they have, they will do it professionally and with all the energy needed to protect their communities,” she said. “They’ll do it because that’s what they signed up to do.”

In Colorado, most fire departments are funded through property taxes, although the Colorado General Assembly two years ago approved a measure that allows departments to petition voters for a sales tax increase. Still, funding is tight as the state wrestles with affordability for its residents as the cost of running a fire department gets more expensive each year.

In recent years, property values have soared and property taxes have climbed as well. But elected officials in 2024 capped how much taxing districts, including fire departments, can increases taxes each year and lowered assessment rates for homeowners, meaning fire departments cannot depend on increased property values for more revenue.

“It truly is a complex problem,” said Vail Fire and Emergency Services Chief Mark Novak, who also serves on the state fire commission. “We have 64 counties with very different characteristics.”

In a mountain resort town such as Vail, the various taxes paid by tourists help fund Novak’s department. But a fire department in a farm community on the Eastern Plains will not be as wealthy because property taxes on agricultural land are much lower, he said.

And in a small community, a sales tax may not be all that lucrative because there are fewer people to spend money.

“Taxes are always a push/pull,” he said. “No community wants to have the highest sales tax in the region. Communities may be supportive of the fire service, but they don’t want to have a crazy high sales tax.”

That is why the state needs to let fire districts levy taxes and look for alternative funding sources such as placing a surcharge on property insurance or adding a line item on license plate fees for fire service, Novak said.

At Vail Fire, the department is planning to spend $1.6 million to buy a new fire truck in 2030, Novak said. That’s up from the $700,000 it cost to purchase a new fire truck in 2020 — a 128% increase. Costs are increasing because steel and aluminum are getting more expensive and because of President Donald Trump’s uncertain tariffs policy.

It takes two to four years to get a fire truck once it is ordered, Novak said.

“There’s a significant issue with being able to maintain a fleet that’s responsive or reliable,” he said. “Nobody wants to know the fire truck didn’t show up because it’s broken.”

Fire departments also are finding it hard to recruit new members.

In larger cities, the applicant pool is smaller, meaning municipal fire departments are competing for the same recruits, Pine said.

“There was a time when you would have 1,500 to 2,000 applicants in the hiring cycle, but now it’s in the hundreds,” she said. “Everybody is looking in the same pool of candidates.”

Meanwhile, rural departments find themselves short on volunteers as populations shrink and as families are busy meeting the demands of a modern household.

Colorado has almost 16,000 firefighters with an estimated 70% of them serving as volunteers, Pine said. But the number of people willing to volunteer is declining even as the demands on fire departments grow with the state’s population and its longer wildfire season.

“We have a lot of volunteer fire departments, and due to the strain on people’s time, we don’t have the volunteers that we used to,” she said. “It’s hard for everybody to get firefighters.”

In Vail, Novak’s department operates with 44 full-time employees and an annual budget of $7 million, which is funded through a mix of property taxes and other tax sources in the mountain resort town. The fire department has needed a bigger staff for years, he said.

While the department’s statutory coverage area is 4.5 square miles, the actual range that Vail’s firefighters can travel on any given day is much larger, Novak said.

Vail Fire also covers a 20-mile stretch of Interstate 70, responding daily to car wrecks, semitrailer fires and other emergencies that can happen in heavy traffic over Vail Pass. The agency is the first to respond to any wildfires on its side of the White River National Forest because the closest U.S. Forest Service fire station is about 50 miles away, Novak said.

On Friday, the department was called within two hours to help a woman who fell off a waterfall and to hike a mile into the backcountry to rescue someone experiencing a medical emergency, he said.

“There’s lots of different things fire departments are doing besides going to fires,” Novak said. “The simplest way to put it is when someone has a problem and they don’t know what to do, they call the fire department.”