Denton Fire by the Numbers, 2025: What the Department's Own Year in Review Says About the Job

30-second answer. The Denton Fire Department published its 2025 Summary on April 13, 2026. Read it as a candidate and the picture is specific: 237 members, 229 of them uniformed and staffing every station around the clock; 24,436 incidents in the year, 14,903 of them EMS calls and 12,313 of those transported; an ISO Class 1 rating effective October 1, 2025; ambulance accreditation from CAAS with a perfect score on all 107 standards; the first electric fire engine in Texas at Station 1; eleven new paramedics trained in-house and seven more EMTs sent to paramedic school in December. Two recruiting numbers sit side by side in the report: 212 people took the 2024 entrance exam, and the department hired eight rookies in 2025. This guide pulls every figure a candidate can use out of that report and says what each one means for you.

What kind of department is this?

The report describes a department that has gone after every external stamp it can earn. In 2025 it received the Insurance Services Office's Class 1 Public Protection Classification, effective October 1, 2025, which the report places in the top 1 percent of fire agencies nationwide. In August 2025 it earned a three-year accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services with a perfect score across all 107 standards, which the report says makes it one of 34 fire departments in the United States and Canada, and one of four in Texas, to hold it. Added to the fire-suppression accreditation it earned from the Commission on Fire Accreditation International in 2023, the report says Denton is one of only 20 agencies in North America to hold all three.

For a candidate, that is a statement about training and documentation culture more than about prestige. Accreditations are audits of written procedures, response data and continuing education. A department that keeps three of them current will expect you to document, train and test on a schedule.

The department also adopted four core values in 2025, which the report names as Respect, Integrity, Courage and Humility. Expect to hear them at the oral board.

How big is it, and what does it run?

• People: 237 members. Fire suppression is staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by 229 uniformed personnel. The 2025 fitness program numbers use a base of 225 firefighters.
• Stations and battalions: the stations are divided into two battalions.
• Apparatus: 9 engines, 2 aerials, 8 medic units, 4 brush trucks, 2 aircraft rescue and firefighting trucks, and a set of specialized vehicles. In April 2025 the department placed a Pierce Volterra electric pumper into frontline service at Station 1, the first electric fire engine in Texas, with a push-in ceremony at the station known as the Powerhouse. The report's stated reason is health: no diesel exhaust in the station or on scene.
• Special teams: the Technical Rescue Team is based at Station 1 and covers heavy vehicle, structural collapse, high-angle, confined space and trench rescue, with tower rescue added in 2025. The Water Rescue Team is housed at Station 5. The Hazardous Materials Response Team is based at Station 3 with ten certified technicians on continuous staffing, supported by more technicians and a decontamination vehicle at Station 7.
• Fleet added in 2025: the electric engine, one large command vehicle, two medic units and a rehab van. Three emergency vehicle technicians closed 562 work orders on 76 vehicles.

The specialties guide covers how you get onto those teams after probation; the stations guide covers where they sit.

What is the call volume, and where is it going?

• 24,436 total incidents in 2025.
• 14,903 EMS calls, up from 14,812 in 2024 (about 1 percent), with 12,313 transports, up 5 percent from 11,706. EMS is the bulk of the work, and Denton transports its own patients.
• 504 fire incidents under the national reporting definitions, the most common being building fires, vehicle fires, rubbish fires, cooking fires and unauthorized burns.
• 462 hazardous materials incidents, most often natural gas leaks.
• 969 rescue incidents.
• 6,478 alarms and service calls.
• The report forecasts call volume to 2030 using the historical average growth of 8 percent a year, and describes the city's population as approaching 166,000 with calls expected to exceed 30,000 a year by 2030.

The department's public safety communications center handled 314,010 calls in 2025 and dispatched 209,439 for service.

What this means on your shift is in the day-on-shift guide. The short version: about 41 EMS calls a day across the city, and a medic unit assignment is where new firefighters spend much of their first years.

How does the department grow its paramedics?

In 2025, eleven new paramedics completed training, and seven EMTs started paramedic school in December. The department formalized a Community Paramedic Program in 2025, staffed through an EMS Lieutenant position, with a stated 2026 goal of moving that position to a shift-based schedule so each shift has a dedicated safety officer and EMS liaison. Denton hires on the paramedic licence alone or on fire certification plus EMT, and then trains the rest at its own cost; the two doors are explained in the EMT or paramedic guide.

How much training is there?

The Training Division recorded 60,512 training hours in 2025, which the report states as 229 hours per firefighter, and members attended 261 external training programs. The training campus has a six-story tower with live-fire props, a two-story Class A burn building, a flashover chamber, commercial and residential ventilation props, a vehicle extrication pad and an outdoor classroom. The Technical Rescue Team runs an annual Rescue Week for all operations personnel and holds biannual team musters.

Wellness, physicals and the fitness test

Every member gets an annual medical physical and an annual fitness test. Physicals run in the spring through an agreement with Texas Woman's University, which the report says includes DEXA body-composition scanning and VO2 max and metabolic testing; in 2025, 168 of 225 firefighters used the university program. The fall Field Readiness Fitness Test measures seven tasks: a ladder climb, a hose drag, a ladder carry, a hose hoist, a pike pole simulator, a dummy drag and forcible entry. The report says 117 firefighters earned fitness bonuses in 2025. Note that this annual test is a different thing from the hiring physical ability test, which is covered in the PAT guide.

The Safety and Wellness Division operates under an occupational health and safety program modeled on NFPA 1500, with quarterly committees for accident review, safety, health and wellness, peer support and protective equipment. Every operational member has two sets of turnout gear on a five-year replacement schedule.

The recruiting numbers a candidate should sit with

The report's recruiting section prints three figures: the recruiter connected with 167,197 people through events and social media in 2025; 402 interested people signed up for information about the 2026 civil service exam; and 212 people took the 2024 exam. In the same report the department says it hired eight new rookies in 2025. The report does not say how many of the 2024 test-takers were certified, passed, or reached the list, and this guide does not turn the two numbers into a rate. What they say plainly is that the entrance exam is the wide end of the funnel and the academy class is the narrow one, and that the things that separate candidates happen after the written test: certification in hand, the personal history statement, the physical ability test and the two interviews. Those steps are in the hiring-process guide.

What the department says it will do in 2026

The report's goals for 2026, in its own order: move operations from 24/48 to a 48/96 schedule (which happened in January 2026; see the 48/96 guide); complete, with East Texas A&M, a 180-day study comparing stress recovery and heart-rate variability on the two schedules; take delivery of two Pierce Enforcer pumpers, a Pierce Ascendant 107 ladder and four Frazer ambulances; open the rebuilt Fire Station 6 at Teasley and Hunter Creek to improve the four-minute response goal on the south side; continue the Station 5 rebuild toward a spring 2027 opening; move the EMS Lieutenant to a shift schedule; run three prescribed burns with the parks department and ten outside agencies; and publish Denton Fire 2030, a five-year strategic plan.