LAKEWOOD, Colo. — A new statewide assessment found two-thirds of Colorado fire departments can't fund their full operations, and nearly 80% can't afford the equipment and staffing they say they need — a gap agencies like West Metro Fire Rescue say is now pushing them toward asking voters for more money.
Colorado's fire departments are being asked to do more than ever, and a new state report shows most of them don't have the money to keep up.
The 2026 Colorado Fire Service Needs Assessment, released this month by the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control (DFPC), surveyed 122 of the state's roughly 340 fire departments and found that two in three — 66.4% — say their current funding isn't enough to run all of their department's operations. Nearly 79% say they can't afford the equipment, training and staffing they've identified as needed just to keep pace with today's calls.
"The needs are real, they are broadly distributed, and they cannot be addressed through local resources alone," the report states, calling the funding gap "the most important single finding of this assessment."
For West Metro Fire Rescue, which serves parts of Jefferson and Douglas counties, the numbers in the report aren't an abstraction — they're the reason the department may ask voters this November to approve new funding.
A department stretched thinner every year
Fire Chief Jeremy Metz said West Metro's call volume has jumped 21% over the last eight years, while the population it serves has grown only 5% in that time.
"This is a very staggering statistic," Metz said. "At the same time, people kind of usually would equate that to increase in population. We are seeing some increased density in population, but we only experienced a 5% increase in population during that time frame."
Metz said emergency medical calls now make up about 60% of the department's total call volume, driven in part by residents aging in place and needing more frequent access to emergency services. Wildfire risk is also climbing.
"The funding is very critical for us," Metz said. "We have just a finite budget. Our main source of revenue is property taxes, and there has been fundamental changes through legislative action on how property tax is calculated and how local governments like West Metro Fire Rescue are receiving this critical funding."
Metz said the department needs three additional fire stations, each staffed by six to 10 firefighters a day — nearly 100 new firefighters over the next decade to meet a projected 35% increase in demand for emergency services.
The cost of the equipment those firefighters need has climbed sharply too. Metz said a fire engine that cost about $700,000 in 2019 now costs $1.3 million, with a four-to-five-year wait to get one delivered. Air packs that protect firefighters from smoke and toxic gases run about $12,000 each — a roughly $4 million purchase West Metro says it can't currently afford, even though the equipment needs replacing.
"Right now we do not have the funding to purchase those," Metz said. "So it is not only just a potential delay to get to our community's emergency, but this critical funding really affects the first responders, and the personal protective equipment that they have, and the critical training that they need."
Metz said the department is working to educate the community about the funding gap and is looking at additional revenue sources. A potential ballot initiative, if approved by West Metro's board of directors, could go before voters this November.
A statewide pattern, not an isolated case
DFPC says West Metro's situation reflects what fire departments are reporting across Colorado. Lisa Pine, the agency's Professional Qualifications and Training Section Chief, said the needs assessment — conducted every two years under state statute — is designed to surface exactly these kinds of gaps.
"What we're finding is the fire departments need people," Pine said. The report counts roughly 2,100 vacancies across Colorado's career and volunteer fire service — a shortfall the DFPC report puts more precisely at 2,126 positions, including 1,345 paid roles and 781 volunteer roles, once individual department figures are totaled.
Money is the second major shortfall, Pine said, and the two problems are connected. The vast majority of Colorado fire departments — 86.9% — rely on property taxes as their primary funding source.
"If the property taxes are reduced, which we understand Colorado's an expensive place to live, and so you want to be able to afford it, but you're also taking money away from the fire department," Pine said. "It's figuring out how do we backfill that funding, and then because of people and funding shortages, they're using older equipment."
That aging equipment is more than an inconvenience, Pine said — it's a safety issue for the firefighters using it.
"They will work in whatever gear they have. They will do the best job they can for their community," Pine said. "The problem is sometimes with that worn-out gear, they're putting their long-term health at risk."
Pine said the pressures aren't unique to Colorado. Volunteer departments in particular are struggling to recruit, she said, as people have less discretionary time to serve while working full-time jobs and managing rising costs of living. Career departments in metro areas are seeing fewer people who want to become firefighters at all.
"This is not a Colorado problem," Pine said. "We're seeing that reduction in people across all the states."
The scope of what departments say they're missing
The DFPC report breaks the shortfall down across ten categories of what it calls "operational capability" — from staffing and equipment to training and emerging threats — and finds funding constraints touching nearly all of them:
- Staffing: Departments report needing 2,126 more firefighters combined — a 20.9% gap on the paid side and a 41.6% gap among volunteers — and 62.3% don't expect to have the funding to fill those positions.
- Equipment: Nearly three-quarters of departments (73.8%) say they need wildland firefighting protective gear, and majorities report needing structural gear, a second set of turnout gear for decontamination, and updated apparatus — but most say they can't currently afford it.
- Emerging threats: Two-thirds of departments (67.2%) identified a need related to electric vehicle and lithium-ion battery fires, and 60.7% cited a need tied to defending structures in wildland-urban interface zones — the two highest-rated concerns in the entire survey.
- Health and safety: Cancer and toxic exposure are the top health concern cited by firefighters statewide (63.9%), tied closely to equipment needs like a second set of protective gear and better station ventilation systems — both items departments say they largely can't fund.
Pine said DFPC's role is to use the data to direct grant funding, training resources and equipment support where they'll help most — but acknowledged the scale of the funding gap is bigger than what any one agency, including DFPC, can solve on its own.
"I think that's the role of the Colorado Fire Commission — is to make sure all of the voices are being heard, from the fire chiefs to the county commissioners, and how we can work together to make these departments sustainable and meet the needs of their community," Pine said.
For now, departments like West Metro Fire Rescue say the choice increasingly comes down to asking their communities directly.
"There is a potential initiative that, if our board of directors were to approve, that our voters would see in November," Metz said.
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