What We Do

• Emergency Services – Provides firefighting, rescue, and emergency medical services, hazardous materials response, water/ice rescue and recovery, vehicle accident extrication, hazard mitigation and technical rescue services. Also participates in regional readiness and responses involving mutual-aid and automatic-aid agreements and cooperative special team activities. The Department’s training function falls within this Division.
  • Ambulance Fees – All residents and non-residents are charged ambulance fees, which are determined by the average cost of a patient's assessment and treatment. More.

• Administration and Support Services – Includes the leadership team who plans, coordinates and supports the department’s many functions, including: personnel and human resources functions; practices and procedures for emergency and non-emergency operations; budgets and procurement of all equipment, supplies and services and manages the maintenance and repair of fire stations, vehicles and equipment.

• Fire Prevention – Reviews building plans for life-safety hazards and code compliance in remodeling and new construction projects, completes inspections of public and business occupancies to ensure/enforce code and safety compliance, presents fire prevention programs to community organizations and conducts voluntary home fire safety surveys. The Division investigates causes and origins of fires, investigates and prosecutes arsons in conjunction with the Police Department, and coordinates fire-safety activities and fire prevention practices with Federal, State, County and other local fire officials.

• Emergency Management – Responsible for the planning and preparedness necessary to coordinate the elements of an effective Homeland Security and Emergency Management Program which integrates all available first responders, city departments, resources, key elected and appointed officials, citizens corps and the private sector into a cohesive disaster management effort. 

• Other Services – Mutual aid services to neighboring fire departments.

DPFD Accreditation

In 2020, the Des Plaines Fire Department was awarded the Insurance Services Office (ISO) Class 1 Public Protection Classification (PPC) rating. This rating demonstrates a commitment to excellence as verified by a third-party.

ISO’s rating system evaluates departments on their communications systems, response times, the type and extent of training that personnel received and the maintenance and testing processes for equipment, as well as the department’s fire prevention efforts and public fire safety education.

ISO rates more than 46,000 fire departments throughout the United States on their overall ability to respond to fires. The PPC rating is sometimes used by insurance companies to calculate premium rates and higher classification ratings typically lead to better rates for residents.

Mission

The Mission of the Des Plaines Fire Department is to deliver excellent, professional Fire/EMS/Rescue services to the community.