Fire Station Maps - USA

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zerg901

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USA Public Safety - many county maps with fire stations - can be added to wiki pages if anyone has a hankerin I reckon

All maps are downloadable I believe; in case anyone wants to build their own version.
 

AK9R

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...can be added to wiki pages if anyone has a hankerin I reckon...
The RadioReference Wiki is a user-editable resource. Any registered RadioReference member can edit the articles in the Wiki.
 

ecps92

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They are out of date as soon as it is created, why... when maybe a page of links to the individual state GIS Pages which generally will have the most accurate information
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KK4JUG

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The facility locations seem to spot on. The descriptions (and equipment) may not necessarily be current but trying to keep most of that contemporaneous would be an impossible task.
 

nd5y

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How often do they move the fire houses in your neck of the woods?
That depends on where you are, how many fire departments in your local area, how much population growth, how many old stations there are the need to be replaced, how much money they can get from grants, bonds, or "temporary" sales taxes. Every placed I have lived since the 1970s has built or relocated one or more fire stations.
 

KK4JUG

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That depends on where you are, how many fire departments in your local area, how much population growth, how many old stations there are the need to be replaced, how much money they can get from grants, bonds, or "temporary" sales taxes. Every placed I have lived since the 1970s has built or relocated one or more fire stations.
Still, I don't think they change often enough to rule out using the resource for general information if you need to.
 

ecps92

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From a locality level you can say rarely, in an over-all statewide level there are plenty being built based on Grants
With some even consolidating the number of stations.

YMMV, just my opinion that the source is already out there, use the "Official" source vs crowd sourcing for this

Fire station maps are out of date as soon as they are created? How often do they move the fire houses in your neck of the woods?
 
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DaveNF2G

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I have fire stations (and other public safety facilities) plotted on my own Google Earth. "Official" locations are not always precise, and sometimes include things that are not fire stations (like the chief's house, corporate hq, recreational facilities, etc.).
 

zerg901

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I am working on Schuylkill County Pennsylvania now. Over 100 stations in the county. Multi "Good Intent", "Humane", "American" etc fire companies.

ecps92 could you give a URL for the source(s) that you are mentioning?

Notes

1. On the Zerg90 maps, if you click on a map marker, and then click on "View in Google Maps", and then click on the fire station picture on the left, you will go to a zoomable and pannable view of the fire station. Google Maps has many rural areas without Street View. Signs on fire stations cannot be read in 2008 Street Views. After that, its better. Apparently Google got better cameras for their cars after 2008.

2. Google Maps is sometimes far off on their station locations and street addresses (up to a mile or more in rural areas); they commonly intentionally alter street addresses for fire stations; and they dont show many stations. You can search their maps for "fire station" to find listings.

3. Home Town Locator has good lats and longs on many stations. I think they use a federal GIS source with info from 2011. They do not have all stations, and they commonly switch "Sta 1" with "Sta 2" for individual fire departments.

4. firedepartments.net has good info about the number of stations per department. Their listings are nominally by county. But actually the listings are by zip code.

5. The US Fire Administration has a FD Registry but the info is sparse.

6. County GIS sites and Assesors info can help to find well hidden fire stations.

7. Nearly every fire station has a sign on it listing the FD name and the station number or name. Google Street View shows the number of bays, the number of floors, sometime the rigs, any radio antennas and sirens, etc.

8. Both the FCC and Census Bureau have apps that will tell you the county associated with lats/longs. However Locust Dale PA and 1 FD in Sullivan/Ulster County NY are giving me problems now. Cant quite figure out which county they are really in. Wikipedia will also tell you which county a location is in. But it is sometime wrong.

9. WikiMaps and OpenFireMap show fire stations. This is crowd sourced info on a international scale. Coverage is maybe 20% now.

10. Vermont 911 has extensive info online. iirc they show every street address in the state plus every water source.
 

LEH

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As it stands, I'll give this 'map' a 0. I checked my home county, three neighboring cities, and one county.

One neighboring city shows the location of its two fire stations and police station. The city is not listed, their locations popped up when checking my home county which is empty. Two of the three cities are not listed and only one of the five shows any public safety information.

I also checked a city where I had lived previously, nothing there either other than old news articles.
 

zerg901

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I forgot to mention that sometimes the Radio Reference Wiki has the highest quality listings of fire stations in a county. Including lats/longs for some stations. Maybe 20% of counties have a list.

Recently I discovered that the 'Incident Map' listings at WidCAD have lats and longs for the federal wildfire stations. Clicking on the links will get you a KML file that you can open with NotePad. The station locations will be below the incidents locations. Some of the listings are off by 1 to 10 miles.
 

zerg901

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waymarking.com also has some good info on fire stations - they always include a photo and lats/longs

I might have figured out why I was having trouble determining which county some fire stations are located in. The Census Bureau app might give misleading results for stations near some county borders. It might have to do with "census tracts". Hopefully the FCC app is more accurate. Although it must be a royal pain to keep track of county borders down to the nearest foot or meter or whatever. Particularly if the borders were defined in the 1600s or 1700s.
 
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