Maryland · NFPA 1750:2026 (Ch. 4–6) · baseline company staffing
Fire/rescue staffing, measured against the standard
Maryland fire and rescue is organized by jurisdiction — 23 counties plus Baltimore City — combining county career personnel, municipal departments, independent volunteer corporations, combination stations, and mutual aid. Each jurisdiction is assessed once, and only where a public source discloses actual on-duty staffing.
24
Jurisdictions assessed
23 counties + Baltimore City
11
Publicly disclose on-duty staffing
46% of jurisdictions
10
Benchmark-comparable
4 meets · 6 below
13
Staffing not publicly disclosed
the transparency gap
The transparency gap
13 of 24 (54%) publish no on-duty staffing figure at all- Meets baseline company staffing benchmark 4
- Below applicable company staffing benchmark 6
- Not publicly disclosed 13
- Insufficient public evidence 1
The bar shows how the assessments fall. A meets/below verdict is only possible when a department publishes an actual per-company on-duty figure — only 11 of 24publish any on-duty staffing at all. Where it isn’t published, the result is “not publicly disclosed,” never a guess. Roster headcount is never used as a substitute.
Governing standard
Which NFPA deployment standard applies — from curated department type, never guessed.
- NFPA 1750:2026 · career-department provisions (Ch. 4–6)
- 1
- NFPA 1750:2026 · volunteer-department provisions (Ch. 7–8)
- 3
- NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions
- 20
- NFPA 1750:2026 · applicability unresolved
- 0
All 24 jurisdictions — standard, assessment & disclosed staffing
| Department | Governing standard | Assessment | Disclosed on-duty | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kent County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| Queen Anne's County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · volunteer-department provisions (Ch. 7–8) | Insufficient public evidence | 3 per engine/aerial/rescue (1 driver/operator + 2 qualified firefighters) | Queen Anne's County Fire & EMS Commission ↗ |
| Howard County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Meets baseline company staffing benchmark | 4 per engine/ladder-truck | Howard County Government / Office of the County Executive ↗ |
| Frederick County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Below applicable company staffing benchmark | 3 per engine/truck/rescue-squad (safety floor; 1 officer) | Frederick County Government / IAFF Local 3666 ↗ |
| Montgomery County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Below applicable company staffing benchmark | 3 per engine (minimum; standard/target is 4) | Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service (Fire Chief Scott E. Goldstein) ↗ |
| Anne Arundel County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Below applicable company staffing benchmark | 3 per engine (minimum; goal is 4) | Anne Arundel County Government / IAFF Local 1563 ↗ |
| Somerset County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · volunteer-department provisions (Ch. 7–8) | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| Calvert County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| Cecil County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| Prince George's County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Meets baseline company staffing benchmark | 4 per suppression apparatus (crew, of a 6-person station minimum; apparatus type not itemized separately as engine/truck/rescue by this source) | Prince George's County Government / IAFF Local 1619 ↗ |
| Harford County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| Charles County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Below applicable company staffing benchmark | 3 per engine/rescue engine | Charles County Department of Emergency Services ↗ |
| Talbot County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| Baltimore County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Meets baseline company staffing benchmark | 4 per engine/truck company (incl. 1 officer) | Baltimore County Government / IAFF Local 1311 ↗ |
| Carroll County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| Wicomico County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| St. Mary's County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| Washington County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| Caroline County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| Worcester County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Below applicable company staffing benchmark | 3 per paramedic engine, 24/7 (at least 1 paramedic) | Town of Ocean City, Maryland ↗ |
| Allegany County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Below applicable company staffing benchmark | 3 per engine/engine-rescue/engine-tanker (2 trained firefighters + driver/operator) | Allegany County Emergency Services Board ↗ |
| Baltimore City Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · career-department provisions (Ch. 4–6) | Meets baseline company staffing benchmark | 4 per engine (minimum effective staffing, 24x7x365) | City of Baltimore (FACETS Consulting, LLP) ↗ |
| Garrett County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · volunteer-department provisions (Ch. 7–8) | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
| Dorchester County Example Township | NFPA 1750:2026 · combination-department provisions | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed | — |
NFPA 1750:2026 is a consensus deployment standard, not automatically a legal mandate. A department is legally bound only where its Authority Having Jurisdiction has adopted it. This assesses baseline company staffing only — not higher zone/risk staffing, effective response force, or response-time performance — and is not a legal finding.
Why this matters
- Fire chiefs & officers
- A clear, sourced staffing baseline for staffing cases and mutual-aid planning.
- Elected officials
- See what your department publishes about on-duty staffing — and what it doesn’t.
- Labor leaders
- A neutral, cited reference point for minimum-staffing discussions.
- Researchers
- Consistent, reproducible NFPA classification with every source linked.
- Insurers
- Deployment-transparency signal to complement ISO/PPC context.
- Attorneys
- Benchmark framing kept explicitly separate from any legal-adoption conclusion.
- Residents
- Plain-language answer to “is my fire department’s staffing disclosed?”
Unresolved evidence gaps
13 of 24 Maryland jurisdictions publish no on-duty staffing figure this layer can use. Roster/membership counts, station counts, and governance names are never substituted. Where a jurisdiction combines a county career department with independent volunteer corporations, the assessment is based only on an officially-sourced composition statement — never inferred from names or county size.
Sponsorship & editorial independence
- Sponsorship funds the work; it never buys a result. Funding cannot change a score, a verdict, the methodology, or which sources we use.
- Sponsors are shown only in clearly-labeled support slots, kept separate from analysis. They never appear inside a verdict, ranking, evidence card, or methodology finding.
- A sponsor’s own department (or a department it is affiliated with) receives no different treatment, verdict, or placement.
- Every value on the site stays sourced to a public record, or is marked “not publicly disclosed.” Sponsorship does not add, remove, or alter any data point.
- No sponsorship is active today. This structure exists so future support can never be mistaken for editorial influence.
24 Maryland jurisdictions · reviewed 2026-08-04 · Methodology & sources →