Note: This article is part of Firehouse's Detroit Fire Department 165th Anniversary Special Section. To read the entire Special Section, click here.
Early records of firefighting in Detroit date back to the early 19th century. Citizens would form a bucket brigade to create a line between the source of a fire and the Detroit River.
The Great Fire of 1805 stood testament to this effort. Roughly 600 citizens quickly established a bucket brigade, but to little avail. The majority of the city was engulfed in flames. A formal fire department was necessary.
The purchase of the first fire engine in 1816 demonstrated serious efforts to establish a firefighting service. To complement the purchase, an informal group of volunteers came together.
In 1860, the Detroit Fire Department (DFD) was born. The first steam engine, which was named Lafayette No. 1, was operated by one engineer, five horsemen, two drivers and one foreman. They were the first firefighters to be paid by the city of Detroit.
Neptune No. 2 and Phoenix No. 3 were put into service soon after.
The Detroit Board of Fire Commissioners was established in 1867 to oversee the new department. The Detroit Firemen’s Fund Association was created weeks later to aid firefighters and their families in the event of tragedy.
The first fireboat, The Detroiter, arrived. Made of wood, it didn’t remain structurally sound for very long and soon was replaced by the steel-hulled James R. Elliot in 1902.
20th Century
April 10, 1922, marked the day of the final ceremonial run for horse-drawn apparatus that the department operated.
On July 30, 1938, Marcena W. Taylor and Marvin White became the first black DFD firefighters. Today, the DFD has 416 black members, or 33 percent of the department.
“I’m a big advocate that we should have members on the job who reflect our community,” Executive Fire Commissioner Chuck Simms tells Firehouse. “It brings a level of trust and relatability that people will have when they see somebody who looks like them.”
Simms joined the department in 1986. When he was running calls, he was particularly sensitive to the importance of preserving the contents of peoples’ homes as much as possible.
“When I walked into a person’s home and I saw a grandmother there, it felt like my grandmother,” Simms says. “That connection allows a person to feel like they connect with me. Having a department that reflects the community is extremely important, and to be honest, in today’s times, it’s more important than ever, because we have just so much division throughout the world.”
Perhaps one of the most notable events in 20th century Detroit is the Uprising of 1967. On July 23, the Detroit Police Department raided an unlicensed bar. The situation grew tense, resulting in a thrown brick shattering the back of a police cruiser. Multiple days of civil unrest followed. The sheer volume of fires was an immense pressure point for the DFD. At least 1,682 fires were fought, 1,609 structure fires among them. Two Detroit firefighters were killed during the uprising: Carl E. Smith (Ladder 11) was killed by gunfire, and John Ashby (Engine 21) was electrocuted while he fought a supermarket fire.
Similar to the Great Fire of 1805, a new wave of activism and growth swept through the city. Soon after, Detroit elected its first Black mayor, Coleman Young, and community engagement saw a major increase.
June 19, 1972, marked the day that the first emergency medical unit went into action.
In 1977, the DFD hired its first women firefighters: Sandy Kupper, Hariett Saunders and Theresa Smith.
Oct. 30, 1983, which was dubbed “Devil’s Night,” is infamous. All pumpers, trucks and squads were utilized to respond to more than 600 alarms: 200 structure/building fires, 43 automobile fires, 308 rubbish fires and countless false alarms.
In 1997, then-Mayor Dennis Archer introduced the “Angel’s Night” initiative, encouraging community patrols and visibility to combat the arson tradition. The Angel’s Night initiative officially ended in 2017, with Detroit reverting to its “Halloween in the D” community activities program. Now, this night typically sees fewer fires than any other night of the year.
21st Century
In 2011, the Detroit Public Safety Foundation, which formerly was the Detroit Police Foundation, opened itself up to collaboration with the DFD. The foundation aims to bring the community together with the Detroit Police Department and the DFD to strengthen the departments and to promote public safety.
In 2015, the DFD began medical first responder training to allow pumpers and squads to respond to Code 1 medical calls.
With a previous Insurance Services Office (ISO) rating of 4, the DFD achieved an ISO 2 designation in 2019, highlighting major improvement in fire preparedness in Detroit.
Second Deputy Commissioner Derek Hillman joined the DFD in 2016 with the assignment to organize a way of improving the DFD’s ISO score.
“Because we have different divisions and each has it own leader, we had to create buy-in from those leaders, to open them to understanding how to improve their sections,” Hillman explains. “I had to sit down with each division to show them how to calculate their score. I created an ISO calculator for each division, so they understood how to create their points, how to improve their points and to see in which areas they were deficient.”
The DFD currently is aiming for an ISO 1 designation.
“We’re five points away from getting an ISO 1,” Hillman says. “We’re working with our training department, and the plan to build new stations will clean up some of our holes within our coverage.”
In 2021, all new hires became required to serve in the role of both firefighter and EMT. The addition of EMT licensure aimed to increase EMS presence and improve performance in Detroit.
Simms tells Firehouse that the training for EMT licensure began through an outside vendor but soon was brought in-house. Another key was the department’s communication with the community, so firefighters’ response to a medical call wasn’t a shock to citizens. To departments considering such a move, Simms advises, “Let [the community] know what you’re doing, because that way, the questions that they ask already will have been answered.”
As for a time frame for that communication: “If the plan is to implement in two years, I would start a year and a half before implementation,” which considers the community as well as members. “It’s very hard to change a deep culture.”
HEARTSafe designation
Spearheaded by the DFD, the city of Detroit became the largest U.S. municipality to earn the HEARTSafe Community Designation in 2024. The program focuses on bettering cardiac arrest response and bystander action and, ultimately, improving sudden cardiac arrest survival rates.
