About Owatonna Fire

Owatonna Fire Department (OFD) is a combination fire department with 33 firefighters - there are 8 full-time firefighters, 20 paid-on-call (POC) firefighters and 5 resident POC firefighters.

Full-Time Firefighters

The minimum full-time staffing for the fire department is one fire commander and one fire equipment operator. They are considered the duty crew, and their shift starts at 8 a.m. The duty crew works for 24 hours. Depending on scheduling determined by the fire chief, a shift may have additional firefighters assigned to any day on the schedule. The fire station is staffed 365 days per year.

Fire response starts with a duty shift page to the on-duty fire commander. Dispatching is provided by the Rice Steele 911 Center by radio. The fire commander determines what additional help is needed to respond to the incident. Off-duty full-time firefighters back up the duty shift when needed. 

Depending on the type of incident, the fire commander can respond with station staffing or page day squad, night squad or both squads, also referred to as an all call, for additional help.

POC Firefighters

POC firefighters respond to fire calls on an as-needed basis. Depending on their availability, POC firefighters are assigned to either the day squad or night squad. POC firefighters must respond to a minimum 40% of paged shift calls to remain on the fire department.

Resident POC Firefighters

There are five POC firefighters that live at the fire station. Resident POC firefighters are assigned a room at the fire station at no cost. They move into the fire station and consider it their home for the next two years.

Resident firefighters must reside at the fire station twenty nights per month and be available for response. Resident firefighters are asked to make a two-year commitment to the resident program. Upon completion, they can choose to remain living at the fire station or move out and become a regular POC firefighter.