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We have compiled a list of questions and topics that we hear frequently.
Hopefully they will help you learn more about us.
Please let us know if there are any other questions you may have (it
might find it's way here!)
Frequently Asked Questions
- Are you volunteers or full time firefighters?
- The Middleton Fire District is proud to remain a volunteer department.
More specifically, we are "paid-on-call" firefighters - we earn an hourly
stipend when a call comes in and when we are training.
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- Aren't career firefighters better than volunteers?
- NO! Training and attitude are key parts of this. We
constantly strive to improve our response and capabilities. Our
responsibility to the community is something we take very seriously and are
very professional in our approach. Recently we earned an ISO rating of
3, which ranks us in the top 3 % of all fire departments in the country!
- Why do you have two fire stations?
- The closer we are to any potential emergency, the quicker we can deal
with it. Establishing a station in the Town of Middleton has cut in
half our response time to that area.
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- Are there people at the fire station all the time?
- Yes and No. We have 5 full-time employees who have administrative, code
enforcement, equipment maintenance, and public education responsibilities. They are allowed
to respond to calls if they are able, but firefighting is not a part of
their jobs. All of the fire suppression personnel are volunteer and
respond from their jobs and homes when a call comes in.
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- If there are not people staffing the fire station, how long does
it take for you to respond?
- Over the past 450 incidents, we have an average response time of about 4.5
minutes. We are very proud of our response time and are constantly
striving to make it shorter.
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- Do you get more calls on a certain day of the week or time of
the day than others?
- Not really. Our call volume is relatively stable across the days
of the week and hours of the day. While the TYPE of calls change with
the season, the overall volume does not.
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- How many firefighters does it take to put out a fire?
- Firefighting is a very labor intensive job that is also very time
dependent - everything needs to be done at once! A hose line needs to
be stretched to put out the fire, the building needs to be searched for
trapped people, the building must be ventilated to clear the smoke, doors
may need to be forced open for rapid access, and a command post must be
established to organize all this! 15 - 20 people on scene would be a
good number to start the scene, but twice that will be needed to keep a
scene going.
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- What is the budget for the fire department?
- The 2007 overall budget for the Middleton Fire Department is $836,543.
Of that, only $137,835 is set aside for fire incident and training pay.
We are very proud of the cost savings we offer for the communities we
protect!
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- How many fire trucks do you send to a fire?
- The number of trucks that we send to an incident depends on exactly what
we are responding to. At a minimum we send and engine and a ladder.
A full structure fire response in the City of Middleton includes 2 engines,
a ladder, a command vehicle, a squad unit, and our Investigation Team
trailer. In the Towns we protect, we add tank trucks to the response.
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- How much does it cost to outfit a firefighter in their gear?
- Description of capability 1
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- I am interested in being a firefighter. What does it take
to join the fire department?
- Please see the "Want to be a
firefighter" page for this information.
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- Why are some fire helmets a different color than others?
- Different colors are used to identify officers and rank on the fire
ground. Everyone has the same color gear, and with a face mask, it is
next to impossible to tell who is who from any distance. On the MIFD:
- White helmets identify Chief officers,
- Red helmets identify Captains,
- Black helmets with white shields identify Lieutenants,
- and firefighters are in black helmets.
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