Philadelphia Fire Department
The Philadelphia Fire Department (PFD) provides firefighting and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) within the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
One of the oldest fire departments in the United States, the Philadelphia Fire Department began as the volunteer Union Fire Company, established on December 7, 1736. After 134 years, the City Council decided the growing city needed a professional fire department, and passed a December 1870 ordinance to create one.
The PFD, like many large city fire departments throughout the county, provides EMS to the city. It currently has one of the busiest EMS Divisions within a fire department in the United States, handling 229,709 emergency medical responses in 2011. Historically, PFD has been home to the busiest medic units in the country. One PFD Advanced Life Support (ALS) Unit, Medic 22, responded to 9,540 calls 2005.
Read more about Philadelphia Fire Department: Organization, Call Statistics, Rank Insignias, Memorial, See Also, External Links
Famous quotes containing the words philadelphia, fire and/or department:
“It used to be said that, socially speaking, Philadelphia asked who a person is, New York how much is he worth, and Boston what does he know. Nationally it has now become generally recognized that Boston Society has long cared even more than Philadelphia about the first point and has refined the asking of who a person is to the point of demanding to know who he was. Philadelphia asks about a man’s parents; Boston wants to know about his grandparents.”
—Cleveland Amory (b. 1917)
“Forty years after a battle it is easy for a noncombatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to have to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“... the Department of Justice is committed to asking one central question of everything we do: What is the right thing to do? Now that can produce debate, and I want it to be spirited debate. I want the lawyers of America to be able to call me and tell me: Janet, have you lost your mind?”
—Janet Wood Reno (b. 1938)