Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service

The Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service (MCFRS), officially the Montgomery County Department of Fire and Rescue Services (DFRS), is the public safety agency that provides fire protection and emergency medical services for Montgomery County, Maryland. The services are provided by a combination of paid county personnel and volunteer members of the various independent, non-profit volunteer fire and rescue corporations located throughout the county.

History


Recruit Class 1 for MCFRS begins 2/29/1988.

The MCFRS went to Oklahoma City in 1995 to conduct USAR operations after the Oklahoma City bombing.

In 2001, the MCFRS went to Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia aboard RideOn buses to assist in urban search and rescue (USAR) efforts immediately after the September 11 attacks.

In 2004, the County Council passed legislation to reorganize the Fire & Rescue Service by placing all personnel, career and volunteer, under the command of a single fire chief. However, actual services are delivered from local fire and rescue companies, who own and operate the fire stations in the county. The county uses an incident command system to coordinate the efforts of paid and volunteer personnel at the scenes of emergencies. Montgomery County works closely with and has mutual aid agreements with Washington, D.C., Fairfax, Frederick, Howard, and Prince George's counties.

In April 2020, MCFRS implemented a COVID-19 Surge Plan which included the staffing of more BLS ambulances, as well as moving ALS providers from AFRA and medic units to chase cars. This, paired with a continuous Blue Alert, which goes in effect when an EMS jurisdictional system is temporarily taxed to its limits in providing pre hospital care and ambulance transportation due to extraordinary situations that contribute to high demand for ambulance service, and decontamination teams stationed at each of the main hospitals in the county enabled proper patient distribution and lessoned the burden on the system. The Plan was ended in June 2020.

On June 30, 2023, Fire Chief Scott Goldstein left MCFRS for a fire and rescue department in Cowlitz County, Washington. Goldstein had been chief since June 2015.

Stations and Apparatus
The county is broken into five battalions, with a total of 36 fire stations and 2 rescue squads.

Stations listed in the above chart with red "(MCFRS)" or green "(Federal)" next to their names are government-owned. Stations that do not say "(MCFRS)" or "(Federal)" belong to volunteer fire & rescue corporations.

* Denotes Special Operations Station


 * Stations 7, 28, 20, 25 - Hazmat Response Team
 * Stations 10, 30, 14 - Swift Water Rescue Team
 * Stations 25, 29, 31 - Technical Rescue Team (TRT)
 * Station 23 - Emergency Response Team (ERT)

Abbreviations:
 * A - Ambulance
 * ALS - Paramedic Chase Vehicle
 * AT - Aerial Tower
 * B - Brush
 * BC - Battalion Chief
 * BE - Brush Engine
 * BS - Boat Support
 * BT - Boat
 * BUTV - Brush Utility Task Vehicle
 * CT - Canteen
 * CP - Command Post
 * DC - Duty Operations Chief
 * E - Engine
 * EMS - EMS Duty Officer
 * EW - Engine Tanker
 * HM - HazMat Unit
 * M - Medic Unit
 * MAB - Medical Ambulance Bus
 * MAU - Mobile Air Unit
 * MCSU - Medical Care Support Unit
 * PAT - Paramedic Aerial Tower
 * PBE - Paramedic Brush Engine
 * PE - Paramedic Engine
 * PRE - Paramedic Rescue Engine
 * RE - Rescue Engine
 * RS - Rescue Squad
 * SA - Safety Officer
 * SU - Support Unit
 * SW - Swift Water
 * T - Truck
 * TR - Technical Rescue
 * UTV - Utility Task Vehicle
 * W - Tanker