City of Palo Alto Fire Department

Welcome to the Palo Alto Fire Department Home Page

Fire Chief Eric Nickel leads a department of 121 personnel (line, prevention and staff) and 7 fire stations. We staff 6 Fire Engines, 1 Truck, and 3 Ambulances. Then during the months from July to October we staff a wildland engine company at our Foothills Park Fire Station (#8) in response to the heightened wildfire dangers of the summer. We are the EMS provider for both the City of Palo Alto and Stanford University including transport ambulance services.

Our goal for this website is to provide you excellent fire safety information and to let you know of local events with your firefighters. We have also added a Fire Report Log so that you can see our incident breakdown and the wide variety of calls to which we respond. Bear with us as we continue to streamline and update information for you.

Please let us know if there are any specific topics you’d like to see here or if you have thoughts on how we can improve our Fire Department Web Page.

We also welcome suggestions or comments on your interaction with or observations of our staff and emergency responders. All contributors identities will be kept confidential. Thank you for suggesting photos of our fire stations. We are working on this and will add them to our "About Us" page as soon as we can.

Completed 2014 Initiatives

• Technology - Implemented new CAD; purchased and placed tablets in service, Fire RMS, PulsePoint, Accella, Telestaff and continued intense focus on connectivity.
• External Communications - We're better storytellers and we're telling authentic stories to ourselves, the community, City Council and the City Manager's Office.  We're sharing the good news!
• Operations - Deployed a new ladder truck, AVL dispatch, boundary drop with MTV, CNT, all ALS all the time, 1-and-1 program, fire alarm response modifications, hazmat team updates and completed bid process.
• Support Services - Performance measurement and reporting, hired and trained new academy, promotional process for Battalion Chief, Fire Marshal, Truck Training and Academy, Blue Card, Lexipol roll out and Public Educator position creation and planning.
• Fire Prevention Bureau - Accella implementation, integration into the Development Center and Enterprise Fund, Fire Investigator agreement with MTV and Hazmat compliance improvement (CERS, portal with SC County)
• Culture Development - Dension Assessment, "United in Service: Diversity, Inclusion and Our Mission" and "Breakthrough Leadership" sessions as well as ongoing Officer Training.
• Internal Communications - Needs assessment and roll out of new resources, new expectations of officers and info sharing and top communication points from every meeting.
• Training and Workforce Planning - Succession planning, established new Battalion Chief and Training Officer, updated Annual Training Plan and back-to-basics training focus.

AED Locations by Map
AED location data is made available for anyone to locate a device in case of a cardiac emergency.