Welcome to the Montana Career Fire Chiefs Association website. On any given day, our members--and their respective staff and crews--respond to the emergency-service needs of nearly 500,000 people in the great State of Montana.

Our member departments respond to structure fires and wildland fires; vehicle crashes and hazardous material incidents; medical calls; and a variety of extrication situations, including high- and low-angle rescue and ice rescue. We also cover prevention and education; terrorism and homeland security; fire investigations, inspections, and a growing number of other community safety and welfare needs. We do all this in the state’s biggest population centers.

Our mission, today, faces many added challenges. Like many parts of the country, we’re experiencing a tough economy and tight budgets. Fire chiefs struggle to continue to deliver the emergency services our customers deserve and expect. We struggle to realize our dream of making Montana communities “the best place to live.”

Yet, it may be that these difficult times present Montana’s career fire chiefs with an opportunity: To demonstrate that WE are leaders in the Fire Service.

With your support and some risk taking, the Montana Career Fire Chiefs Association can prove itself an effective force in our community and firefighter safety issues. By continuing to cultivate positive relationships and building coalitions, by approaching our problems with an open mind and listening to new ideas from a new generation of Fire Chiefs coming along behind us, we can make a difference.

And, in conclusion, we promise this: As members of this Association and as community leaders, we will do our best to continue to serve YOU each and every day. We invite you to stop by the MCFCA website regularly for meeting news and notes, training information, and other resources for career fire chiefs and the combination and career firefighters.

Through our Legislation to Watch page, we’ll also keep you posted on pending and active state legislation that impacts our Association mission and individual agency responsibilities. We foresee our Legislative Staff using this page to touch base with our concerns and needs, such as (but not limited to) firefighter safety, health and retirement.

Already, on the website, you’ll find our members have endorsed the use of residential fire sprinklers. Look for more issues that express our strong feelings.

So stay tuned. See you on the website and please contact my office, any Montana Career Fire Chief Association board member, or any other MCFCA Member Department for any further information.