Teaneck Fire Department

Teaneck Fire Department traces its roots to five independent volunteer companies that protected the township beginning in the 1890s and early 1900s. Four of them merged into the official municipal Teaneck Fire Department in 1915 under founding Chief Kenlock V. Ridley, and the department steadily transitioned from horse-drawn and hand-drawn apparatus to a fully paid, professional force over the following decades, adding proactive fire-code inspection authority in the 1930s and a dedicated arson-investigation program in the late 1970s in response to a wave of vandalism fires.

Today the department operates from four stations - fire headquarters at 1231 Teaneck Road, plus companies on Cedar Lane, Teaneck Road, and Windsor Road - and fields 93 members (31 officers, 60 firefighters and 2 civilian staff) across four shifts, 365 days a year, under Fire Chief Joseph A. Berchtold. Roughly nine in ten members are assigned to fire suppression, and the department reports an average response time of about three minutes, ahead of the NFPA's four-minute recommendation.

Beyond structural firefighting, crews respond to motor-vehicle accidents, water and ice rescues, and hazardous-condition calls. A dedicated Fire Investigation Unit works alongside the county prosecutor's office on fire-cause determinations, and a Fire Alarm Bureau still maintains a legacy network of 315 street alarm boxes across the township.

Teaneck Fire Department does not have an active full-time firefighter posting on the Township's job board at this time; the department maintains a recruitment video for prospective candidates and periodically posts openings through the Township's official job-postings page. A part-time Fire Prevention Specialist/Fire Inspector position is currently posted through that same page.