How an Annual Report Will Benefit Your Fire Department
As the Fire Chief or member of your fire department, you know what you do day in and day out, but who else knows that?

A fire department is a valuable community asset providing emergency and non-emergency essential services to residents, businesses and visitors. Regardless of the size of the community, many people will never need the emergency services the fire department provides. This is especially true in a large city, where the percentage of people using emergency services is very small. As an example, consider a city with a population of about 40,000 people where the fire department provides fire, emergency medical, rescue, and technical rescue emergency services. The fire department made about 6,000 calls in 2022. Some of those calls were to non-residents, and some were to the same resident on multiple occasions, but for this example, assume that all calls were to residential homes, with one person at each home and all responses were unique (never responded to the same home more than once). In this scenario, the fire department touched 15 percent of the population. Those 15 percent are aware somewhat of what you do, but what does the other 85 percent of the population know, and how do you tell them what you do? You tell them with your annual report.

Technically, an annual report is a comprehensive report on the fire department’s activities from the preceding year. The annual report provides information to elected officials, residents, businesses, and other interested people about the fire department’s activities and accomplishments. The annual report is a way to market your department and share the department’s capabilities without being boastful.