Bennett Fire Protection District

Bennett-Watkins Fire Rescue traces its roots to 1951, when the Town of Bennett dissolved its municipal fire service and residents formed the Bennett Community Volunteer Fire Department, funded in its earliest days by member dues of a quarter a month. The district expanded west toward Watkins in the early 1970s, added ambulance service through the Bennett Rescue Squad in 1981, and merged the fire and rescue operations into the Bennett Fire Protection District in 1986. The district hired its first full-time career firefighter in 1991 and has grown steadily since, adding a fourth station in 1997 to cover its expanding southern reach.

Today the district fields roughly 70 career and volunteer personnel operating out of four stations, answering an estimated 1,300 to 1,400 calls a year across a service area spanning several hundred square miles of the Town of Bennett, the Town of Watkins, and unincorporated Adams and Arapahoe counties east of Aurora, protecting an estimated 9,000 residents. Operations run around the clock with advanced life support (ALS) capability, backed by Life Safety, Fleet Maintenance, and Health and Safety divisions that handle fire prevention and code enforcement, apparatus repair, and staff wellness.

The department organizes its work around a C.A.R.E.S. framework — compassion, accountability, responsibility, education, and safety — that Fire Chief Earl Cumley points to as the throughline of its mission "to preserve life and property" for a district he expects to keep growing over the next two decades.

Bennett-Watkins Fire Rescue hires both career and volunteer firefighter/EMS personnel, along with EMS-only volunteers, and recruits year-round through its Employment inbox even when no positions are formally posted. Career openings are listed on the district's Open Positions page as they arise; volunteer intakes run on a separate cycle and are periodically closed to new applicants.