A History of Firefighting

When a fire breaks out and someone comes to put it out, how much should that cost? If the question sounds strange, that is completely normal. We put a price on water and electricity, paying for what we use. But putting out fires never comes with that kind of bill.

For something to have a price tag, it usually takes two things: you must be able to exclude those who do not pay, and the benefits of the service must go directly to the one paying for it. Firefighting fails on both counts. When someone puts out a fire at your neighbor's house, your house survives, the alley survives, and the houses behind it survive too. The benefits of what I paid spill over to the house next door. So the neighbor has no real reason to pay, and I have every reason to wait until the neighbor pays first. To set a price, you have to be able to count who benefited and by how much, but here, there is simply no way to measure that.

The first half of the question—whether you can choose to protect only the homes that paid—was actually settled a long time ago. More than three hundred years ago in London, there was a time when insurance companies nailed metal fire marks onto the walls of policyholders' homes. Rumors still circulate that fire brigades simply passed by houses without a mark, but the London Fire Brigade Museum firmly rejects this as a myth. Firefighters rushed to fires regardless of whether a building was insured. After all, if the fire spread, the entire neighborhood would burn to the ground.

So the real question in this story is not how that chapter ended, but what came next. Even after it proved impossible to protect homes selectively, no one could agree on who should pay, or how much. And because people could not set a direct price, they began collecting payments in other ways. They traded votes, taxed unrelated transactions, collected membership dues, volunteered their own time, and eventually created workarounds like insurance premium discounts.

This series follows those detours one by one. The backbone of the story is how and where each of them went wrong. It begins in Rome, but the Roman story is not the one you think you know.

There is a widely circulating story that the wealthy Roman Crassus ran a private fire brigade of 500 men. According to this tale, when a fire broke out, they would rush to the scene and haggle with the owner over price, watching the flames until a deal was struck, and only putting out the fire once the property was bought for next to nothing. It is often described as "the world's first fire brigade."

There is only one source for this story: Chapter 2 of Plutarch's Life of Crassus. If you read the passage with the original Greek text and the Loeb Classical Library translation side by side, this is all it actually says: In Rome, buildings were so massive and crowded that fires and collapses were frequent, and seeing this, Crassus bought up enslaved architects and builders. When they numbered over 500, he bought up properties that were on fire and those neighboring them, because the owners, overwhelmed by fear and despair, sold them off for a pittance. That, the text records, was how the largest part of Rome came into his hands.

There is no mention here of putting out fires. Nor is there any mention of waiting around to haggle over prices. To be sure, scanning the entire Life of Crassus for the Greek root meaning to extinguish a fire yields nothing in that passage. What is more, Plutarch was not recounting this as a tale of firefighting. At the head of this section, he wrote "proof of greed," and right before explaining how Crassus amassed his fortune, he even added the caveat, "if one must tell the truth with a touch of malice." The author was signaling that he was passing down a hostile tradition.

That is why a rebuttal is widely circulating these days: that Crassus was running a real estate land grab, not a fire brigade. That rebuttal aligns with the original text. But taking this a step further to say "there was no such thing as private firefighting in Rome" swings too far in the other direction. There was someone else who actually led his own slaves to fight fires, and two different authors recorded his story.

Strip away what is not in the original text, and the sentence left behind forms the backbone of this story. What Crassus bought was not firefighters, but builders. There was no value attached to putting out fires, but there was to rebuilding in their wake. He was simply standing on the side where the value was.

His name was Marcus Egnatius Rufus. He appears in Book 53, Chapter 24 of Cassius Dio's Roman History. During the year he held the office of aedile, he used his own slaves and hired additional men to rescue burning homes. While in office, he paid for this entirely out of his own pocket.

The repayment arrived in two ways. One was that the people reimbursed him for his expenses, but the second was the real prize. The people immediately elected him praetor. Dio notes that this was contrary to the law. Velleius Paterculus also recorded the same man, writing that he won popularity by extinguishing fires with his band of slaves, and as that popularity grew day by day, he became praetor right after being an aedile. Two different authors recorded the exact same course of events.

Here is the key point. Rome did have private firefighting organizations. They were just never sold. There is no record of him collecting fees from the homes he saved; instead, he gathered popularity from the entire city. Since there was no place to set a price, he recouped his investment in something other than money.

Yet this method had an inherent flaw. Unlike a price, votes have no ceiling. Riding that popularity, Rufus issued a public notice stating that he had handed the city over to his successor in intact condition. According to Dio, the leading men were all displeased, and Augustus was the most displeased of all. Augustus immediately instructed the aediles to prevent fires, and to extinguish them whenever they broke out. Rufus aimed all the way for consul, was blocked, and ultimately met his ruin after plotting to assassinate Augustus.

The first recorded attempt to run firefighting privately thus ended as a political incident. It was not because he was evil, but because popularity was the only thing someone could take back after spending private money on an unpriceable service. And because popularity quickly becomes power, the state could not let it stand for long.

The next answer came from Augustus. It is recorded in Cassius Dio, Book 55, Chapter 26. When fires broke out across several parts of the city, he formed seven cohorts of freedmen to deal with such emergencies and appointed commanders of equestrian rank over them.

Dio adds an intriguing detail. Augustus intended to disband this organization shortly. Yet he did not disband them. Dio writes that it was because he "found by experience that their assistance was very valuable and indispensable." What was set up as a temporary measure became permanent once put into practice. From then on, this night watch stationed barracks within the city and received their pay from the public treasury. Suetonius also briefly notes in *Augustus* that he "devised night watch stations to prevent fires."

People often label this the "world's first fire brigade," but using that label erases the two scenes we just saw. It is more accurate to distinguish between different tracks. Rufus is recorded earlier as a private organization, while this night watch is an early record of a permanent organization run on public funds. The government bureau in Joseon, the citizen union in Philadelphia, and the professional fire departments of modern cities that appear later all belong to distinct tracks of their own.

Yet what truly matters is the chapter that follows. In Book 55, Chapter 31, when funds ran short for war expenses and maintaining the night watch, Augustus created a new 2% tax on the sale of slaves. Buying and selling slaves had nothing to do with putting out fires. But that was precisely why he did it. Because there was no clear way to determine who should be billed or how much to charge for putting out a fire, he found another transaction that could be priced and attached the cost there.

This method lasted two thousand years. Even today, one source of firefighting funds in Korea is attached to an item that has nothing to do with firefighting. We will return to that story at the very end.

Around midday on the 15th day of the 2nd lunar month, 1426, strong northwest winds struck Hanseongbu. A fire starting from a house in the south burned down Gyeongsiseo and 116 gan of northern corridors, along with 1,630 houses in the Central Ward, 350 in the Southern Ward, and 190 in the Eastern Ward. The Veritable Annals recorded the dead as 9 men and 23 women.

The very next line reveals how scrupulous this record was: "Children, the elderly, and the sick who burned to ashes were not included in this count." The scribe clearly defined the scope of what was tallied. This toll was not simply everyone who perished in the fire, but rather "the count under these specific criteria." The following day, flames claimed Jeonokseo, 8 gan of corridors, and about 200 more houses east of the Bell Tower.

Eleven days later, on the 26th day of the 2nd month, the Ministry of Personnel petitioned the King. The opening line declared that because there was "no agency in the capital in charge of fire-prevention laws," townspeople were careless, causing fires that wiped out private wealth. They proposed creating Geumhwadogam. Its roster called for 7 Chief Officers, 5 Directors, and 6 Associate Directors and 6 Magistrates each. The petition concluded: "Make it a permanent office and never abolish it, so that fire prevention may be overseen." The King approved it as written.

This was an early milestone for a permanent agency. Yet reading through to the end reveals a crucial detail. The seven Chief Officer posts went to the Minister of War, the Chief Overseer of the State Tribunal, the Supreme Commander of the Three Armies, and the Overseer of the Directorate of Military Supplies, with the Mayor of Hanseong handling operations. The director, associate director, and magistrate seats were also filled concurrently by officials holding other jobs. Nowhere in the decree does it mention creating a post solely dedicated to fighting fires.

Joseon's solution was neither a fire tax nor fire marks. It was simply piling one more duty onto officials already working full-time elsewhere. It was an approach that required no price tag and demanded no new budget. In return, however, firefighting became nobody's primary job.

On December 7, 1736, a group of people in Philadelphia signed their names on a sheet of paper. It was the constitution of the Union Fire Company. The handwritten minutes have survived, allowing us to read through its articles one by one.

Article 1. Each member must provide, at his own expense, 2 leather buckets and 4 bags. The bags must measure at least 4 yards, and both buckets and bags must be marked with the member's initials. And it firmly stipulates that this gear "shall not be used for any other purpose than protecting our property in case of fire." Missing a piece meant a fine of 5 shillings each, missing a monthly meeting cost 1 shilling, and refusing a turn as clerk cost 5 shillings. Article 7 caps the company at 25 members. Article 10 states that if a member dies, the company will assist his widow as though her husband were still alive, until she remarries.

And Article 4 is the most crucial clause in this text: "Whenever we hear of a fire at or near the house of any among us, we will immediately repair there with our buckets and bags, and do our utmost to preserve the property of whichever of us is in danger." If two or more members are in danger at the same time, the group divides its forces. It means exactly what it says. This contract was a promise made for the houses of its members. It was a document written to draw a line.

Yet memoirs written by the very same man about fifty years later tell a different story. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin introduces this company by writing that it had thirty members and that the buckets and bags were to be brought "to every fire." He also notes that more companies were formed one after another until they finally included "the far greater part of the inhabitants of property." Fines for absence paid for pumps, ladders, and firehooks, and he adds that from that point on, the city never lost more than one or two houses to fire at a time. Of course, this is one man's recollection, and a story in which he himself is the main protagonist.

We will not judge here which of the two documents reflected the reality of those days. What is certain is this: There was a contract created to draw a line, and the way that line was actually maintained was by erasing what lay outside it. By continually multiplying the companies. For reference, even this company may not have been the very first. An editorial note attached to the document mentions that this company may have been modeled on an earlier firefighting society in another city, noting that the earlier group was founded in 1717 and that its articles were adopted on March 7, 1734.

In London, insurance companies had been running fire brigades with their own money. But starting in 1862, they began to raise objections. In the House of Commons in 1876, MP Ritchie explained the circumstances like this: the insurance companies had begun protesting that year against the "onerous and burdensome duty" thrust upon them, having concluded that such work should not be left to private enterprise. Lengthy correspondence with the Home Office followed. Let us note the caveat that this was a lawmaker's account given on the floor of Parliament.

The result was the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act of July 5, 1865. Section 4 provided that, beginning January 1, 1866, the duty of extinguishing fires and protecting life and property would be entrusted to the Metropolitan Board of Works. Section 6 decreed that on that same day, the fire stations, fire engines, and gear belonging to the insurance brigade would be handed over entirely to the Board. Even the obligation to pay pensions was transferred right along with them.

And what was truly revolutionary about this law was its funding provisions. Here, for the first time, "who pays how much"—an unsettled question for two thousand years—was written down in actual numbers. Section 13: Insurance companies must pay 35 pounds every year, in advance each quarter, for every 1 million pounds of the gross amount insured within London. Section 18: The Treasury contributes within the amount approved by Parliament, not to exceed 10,000 pounds a year. Section 19: The assessment levied on parishes cannot exceed half a penny per 1 pound of the poor rate valuation. It split the bill among three parties: insurance companies, the national government, and local neighborhoods.

Yet to understand how this solution actually held up, you have to read Section 30. If the fire brigade traveled outside the metropolitan boundaries to put out a blaze, the owner and the occupier of the property were jointly liable to pay the full costs, as well as a reasonable fee for the call-out and the use of the equipment. If a dispute arose, two justices of the peace would summarily decide even whether sending the engines had been appropriate. Inside the boundary, it was free; outside, there was a bill. What determined whether there was a cost was not the scale of the danger, but a line drawn across the map.

Traces of the old ways lingered on as well. Section 8 allowed the Board to pay rewards to anyone who gave notice of a fire, as well as to the water company's valve turncocks who turned on the water quickly. Because arriving late makes fighting a fire pointless, the old habit of putting a price tag on speed—since they could never put a price tag on the fire itself—remained preserved right inside modern legislation like a fossil.

On March 21, 1876, the House of Commons spent an afternoon debating whether to appoint a select committee to investigate this fire brigade. In the transcript of that debate lies the sharpest insight in our story.

It comes from the account given by Mr. Ritchie, Member of Parliament. When the new fire brigade was being formed, the Home Secretary asked Chief Officer Shaw for an estimate of the proper scale. Shaw reported that protecting £900 million worth of property required one chief officer, 574 men, and £70,000 a year. The Home Office was taken aback, saying that unless the total was brought down to near £50,000 a year, the entire undertaking would likely fall through. Shaw submitted a second estimate of 416 men and £52,000, but that was rejected as well. His third estimate—350 men and £50,000—was adopted. For context, the area covered by the insurance companies' brigade had been 10 square miles, whereas the new brigade was expected to cover 120 square miles. What determined the size of the organization was not the city's needs, but the amount the government was willing to spend.

That same day, Sir James Hogg, Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, revealed the actual budget in his response. In 1875, the brigade's operating income consisted of £10,000 from the government, £18,093 from insurance companies, and £43,514 from the halfpenny rate, totaling £71,607. Within ten years, the ones paying the most were the local neighborhoods. The government's share remained frozen at the cap set by law. Sir James Hogg remarked that even if they wished to do more, "this is all that can be done on a halfpenny." Mr. Ritchie calculated that out of 395 men on the roster, 106 were assigned to fire escapes, and after subtracting those who were sick or on leave, only 164 men were actually available for duty at night. It should be noted that this was one member's calculation, and counterarguments were raised during the same session.

So what happened next? On February 6, 1884, a bill was introduced in the House of Commons to revise the insurance companies' contribution. It had taken 19 years since the ratio was first set.

Let's look even further ahead. On April 10, 1907, an MP asked whether it was true that insurance companies paid £30 per £1 million. After correcting the figure to £35, the government answered that outside the jurisdiction of the London County Council, fire insurance companies had no such obligation to contribute, with the exception of one or two large cities governed by local acts, and in various other cities and districts, voluntary contributions were the custom. The reply went on to cite the recommendation of a 1900 House of Commons Select Committee that all fire insurance companies should be required by law to contribute. Then came the closing sentence: "I am not, however, prepared to introduce legislation to that effect at present." The only place where an answer had ever been provided was still inside the drawn line.

Let's look at the present day. According to the U.S. Fire Administration registry, out of 27,166 registered fire departments, 70.0% are entirely unpaid and 15.5% are mostly unpaid. Fully career departments make up only 9.5%. In terms of headcount, 52.6% of the 1,058,800 firefighting personnel are volunteers. The registry itself points out that because registration is voluntary, it is not an exhaustive census.

Yet change the measuring stick, and the picture flips. The National Fire Protection Association estimated that in 2020, there were 29,452 fire departments in the United States. While all-career or mostly career departments account for only 18% of that total, they protect 70% of the population. Meanwhile, 95% of volunteer firefighters serve communities with fewer than 25,000 residents, and 48% serve communities with fewer than 2,500. "What constitutes the true core of American firefighting?" is a question that cannot be answered until you decide what you are counting. And as the report itself notes, the survey behind this estimate had a response rate of just 13% to 16%.

Spending moves on an entirely separate track. Local fire protection expenditures in the United States tripled between 1980 and 2019, even after adjusting for inflation. Since 1986, costs have surged by 140%, while the number of career firefighters grew by 51%. Over that same period, volunteer ranks actually shrank: from 745,000 in 2018 to 722,800 in 2019, and down to 676,900 in 2020. Citing shorter work shifts, the expansion of emergency medical services, and rising pension and healthcare costs, the report conceded that "this distinct upward trend is difficult to explain."

And that brings us back to the figure from the beginning. In 2014, the total economic cost of fire in the United States was estimated at $328.5 billion, or 1.9% of gross domestic product. By category, fire safety measures built into buildings formed the largest share at $57.4 billion, followed by fire-rated products at $54.0 billion, the value of volunteer firefighters' donated time at $46.9 billion, and local fire department expenditures at $41.9 billion. The line item nobody ever billed was larger than the budget actually spent.

Yet that $46.9 billion should not be read as "how much those people could have earned." The report explicitly defined that figure as "the cost of converting all volunteer fire departments to career departments," and explained its reasoning in the very same section. It chose that approach simply because there were no reliable data to measure actual donated hours. The authors even added a disclaimer warning readers not to take this to mean volunteer firefighters will eventually be replaced by career personnel. Unable to put a price on the service itself, they calculated "how much it would cost to buy it" instead. That single line captures the essence of this entire dilemma.

You don't need to predict the future. Instead, if you look at where costs are rerouted, and who is left outside that detour, you can see the board moving before anyone else does. Here are four key places to watch.

First is the rating. In the United States, there is a system that scores a community's firefighting capabilities. It grades 10 points for emergency communications, 50 points for the fire department, 40 points for water supply, and adds a 5.5-point credit for community risk reduction—totaling 105.5 points—and assigns a rating from Class 1 to 10 based on the results. Class 1 represents superior property protection, while Class 10 indicates that minimum criteria are not met. If a home is more than 5 miles by road from a fire station, that alone makes it Class 10. However, if an automatic aid agreement is in place with a neighboring fire station, it is reassessed taking that agreement into account. The water supply score is determined by counting fire hydrants within 1,000 feet of a representative point. This rating is used to calculate fire insurance premiums. The operating organization itself explains that it provides "an additional incentive and reward for improving fire protection by offering lower insurance premiums," and states that it holds data on more than 40,000 fire response jurisdictions. Fire protection was never given a price tag; rather, it made the price of another product change. It is not the price itself, but the shadow of a price. And no matter how much you improve your own home, there are parts that will never change until the community builds a fire station.

Second is where the funding comes from. In South Korea, the Fire Safety Grant Tax is funded by 45% of the total individual consumption tax levied on tobacco. In 2026, 1.0503 trillion won went to 17 cities and provinces, of which 583.5 billion won was for personnel costs of firefighting staff, and 466.8 billion won was for fire and safety project expenses. Buying cigarettes and putting out fires have nothing to do with each other. The structure is identical to the method Augustus used when taxing the sale of slaves. Across two thousand years, only the target of the tax has changed.

Third is the number of people working without pay. When this number shrinks, areas that previously carried no price tag suddenly turn into budget problems. That is when the question, "Who has been footing this bill all along?" belatedly arrives in the shape of an invoice.

Fourth is the line. The way London's 1865 law crafted an answer was by drawing a line on a map, and today's rating system also sets its lowest class with a line at 5 miles. Lines always create an inside and an outside. No matter which system you examine, you should first ask: "How far is this answer an answer?"

Finally, just one more thing. Many answers have appeared throughout this story. Fire marks were issued, unrelated transactions were taxed, obligations were placed on public officials, dues were collected, people gave their time for free, and a detour called insurance discounts was created. Yet not one of them ever answered the question of "who pays how much." Every single one was a way of accepting something else in place of a price. The only place where a price truly seemed to be set was when a line was drawn on a map, turning everything beyond it into a target for billing. Alongside the history of things that were made, this is how the history of an endeavor remains—one that had nowhere to place a price tag, and so continued to receive something else instead.