Fire Department

Serving with Honesty, Integrity, and Compassion.

Mission Statement

It is the mission of the Charlton Fire Department to provide the best possible service to our customers, whether harmed by fire, accident, sickness or natural disaster. We will mitigate the incident with competence, compassion, and care, with the highest level of professionalism regardless of the status of the customer.

Guiding Principles

Read the guiding principles by Brunacini, Alan V.; Fire Command; Second Edition; Heritage Publishers, Inc. Phoenix, Arizona; 2002 (page 39):

• We will attend to the needs of the customers before anything else is done.
• Is the action legal and ethical?
• Is the action within my scope of authority?
• Are you willing to be held accountable for your decision?
• Will the action bring about a satisfactory conclusion to the event?
• Is the risk worth the reward?
• We will risk our lives a lot, in a highly calculated and controlled manner, to protect a savable human life.
• We will risk our lives a little, in a highly calculated and controlled manner, to protect savable property.
• We will not risk our lives at all to protect lives or property that is already lost.
• We will be nice and respect everyone we have contact with. 

About the Charlton Fire Department

The Charlton Fire Department was established in 1925. The fire department was an entirely on-call department until April 10, 1989 when they hired the town’s first 3 full time fire fighter/Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT). Today the department employs 20 full-time firefighter/EMT’s, in addition to the Chief, the Deputy Chief, the Fire Prevention Officer and the Administrative Assistant. The department also employs 8 on-Call firefighters and EMT’s.

Headquarters Location

Fire Headquarters is staffed 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Full time personnel are organized into four groups of 5 firefighter/EMT’s each working 24 hour shifts beginning at 8 a.m. The staffing level during Monday through Friday daytime operations is 5 full-time members. In addition to the in house staffing, call firefighters and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel are on call every evening from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. At all times additional members of both the on call and full time may be summoned to assist the on duty personnel through a radio dispatch and paging system for any type of incident. The Headquarters location is located at:
10 Power Station Road
Charlton, MA 01507

Station 2 Location

Station 2 houses 4 pieces of apparatus and is an unmanned substation. It is located at the following location:
54 North Main Street
Charlton, MA 01507

Coverage Zone

The department’s primary response area covers over 44 square miles of land with approximately 300 miles of roadway and protects just over 14,000 residents. The Charlton Fire Department annually responds to over 2600 calls for service with some or all of our apparatus protecting over 1.6 billion dollars worth of property.

Apparatuses

The department apparatus include:

• 1 Forestry Truck
• 1 Heavy Rescue
• 1 Marine Unit
• 1 Tanker
• 1 Tower Ladder
• 3 Engines
• 3 Paramedic level Ambulances

Specialized Units

Within the Charlton Fire Department there are several specialized units that require additional advanced training in order to provide quality service to the town of Charlton.

Fire Chief

The Fire Chief for Charlton Fire Department is Edward J. Knopf. The following are the roles of the Fire Chief:

• The Fire Chief is appointed by the Selectmen in accordance with M.G.L. chapter 48 section 42.
• The Fire Chief performs all of the duties required of his position by the General Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and enforce the rules and regulations of the Department of Public Safety pertaining to his position. This includes extinguishing and prevention of fires as well as issuance of various permits. The Chief may designate any member to assist him in his duties as prescribed by law.