New Brighton Department Of Public Safety-Fire Division

New Brighton delivers fire protection through its Department of Public Safety, an all-hazards agency that combines police, fire, and emergency management in one organization based at 785 Old Highway 8 NW. A Director of Public Safety and two deputy directors lead the combined department, and the fire side operates as the Fire Division — an ISO Class 3 paid-on-call organization supported by a full-time fire marshal who handles residential and commercial property inspections and code enforcement.

The division fields a broad rescue capability for a paid-on-call department: an ice rescue team, a water rescue team with two boats (one fitted with GPS and sonar for victim searches), a confined space entry team, and three rescue-ready apparatus carrying hydraulic extrication tools to cover crashes on the two interstates that cross the city. New Brighton is also one of five fire departments in the North Suburban Hazardous Materials Response Team, a NIMS Type II joint-powers team that covers nine municipalities and roughly 140,000 people in suburban Ramsey and Hennepin counties.

Prevention is a large share of the work — the division inspects businesses and public facilities on a recurring schedule and puts on more than one hundred fire education events a year. The department's roots reach the 1930s, when firefighters answered an alarm bell at the town hall and the village council set pay at $2 per call; the New Brighton Fire Department formally organized under bylaws in 1948 with Ed Krist as its first chief, and today it protects a city of more than 23,000 residents.

New Brighton hires entry-level paid-on-call firefighters through the city's GovernmentJobs portal — no prior experience is required, and recruits are trained and licensed to the same standards as full-time firefighters. Hiring runs in periodic recruitment cycles that begin with a mandatory informational meeting, followed by a physical agility test, an oral interview, and medical, psychological, and background screening, with a one-year probationary period after hire. The 2026 cycle accepted applications July 20 through August 24, with the physical ability test on September 12 and a November 9 start date.