A firefighter’s jacket hangs beside the Eden Prairie Fire Department logo on a truck at Fire Station 2 during the city’s Neighborhood Night at the Fire Station in August. File photo by Hayden Koughan
The Eden Prairie Fire Department (EPFD) is continuing its effort to expand staffing to improve response times, posting nine additional positions.
The fire department conducted a study with California-based Citygate in 2024, examining standards of cover and staffing levels in the department. The study found that EPFD overall is a successful fire department but could reduce response times to meet industry standards.
Response times are broken down into three components: call processing time, turnout time and travel time. The industry standard for call processing time, or dispatch time, is 90 seconds, for turnout time it is two minutes, and for travel time it is five minutes.
The study found it takes EPFD an average of 11 minutes and 48 seconds to arrive on the scene from the time dispatch takes the call. Industry best practice is to arrive on the scene within five minutes after leaving the fire station.
Fire Chief Scott Gerber said that to reach industry best practice, the fire department needs to staff all four of Eden Prairie’s fire stations 24 hours a day. EPFD currently staffs two stations 24 hours a day, rotating between the four stations.
To do that, Gerber said the department needs to add more full-time staff. EPFD currently has 11 full-time employees and 99 part-time duty crew members.
The department already hired three additional full-time staff members in November, and posted nine additional positions earlier the same month, Gerber said. Five of the positions are for lieutenants and four are for firefighters, who operate the department’s vehicles.
Lieutenants sit in the front right seat of fire trucks, guiding the decision-making process within the vehicles, Gerber said. There are a number of staff members trained to fulfill this position currently, including chiefs, lieutenants, station captains and duty crew members.
All personnel need to attend training classes to sit in the front right seat of the vehicles and take on that role, Gerber said.
“As we build out, we are going to have some consistency in that officer seat by having a full-time lieutenant sitting in that seat on a regular basis,” Gerber said. “Eventually we’ll get to where we have all the stations with somebody in that spot.”
Gerber said staffing expansions will not impact the need for duty crew staff. Duty crew firefighters have other full-time jobs but work shifts of any length based on their availability, up to 36 hours a month or 108 hours a quarter.
However, he said, duty crew staff work in excess of these standards.
“There’s no impact in taking anything away from them and needing less part-time or duty crew staff because we’re still looking to expand, to get to the spot where we can staff all four fire stations 24 hours a day,” Gerber said.
EPFD received a federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant to help fund the first part of its staffing expansion. The grant allows the department to share the costs of the new staff members with the federal government.
The city will use the grant over a four-year period, with the grant funds paying 75% of the cost for the first two years the new firefighters are on staff in 2026, while the city pays 25%, Gerber said. In the third year, the city pays 65% and the grant covers 35%, and in the fourth year, the city covers 100% of the costs.
Gerber said full-time and part-time staff will work in the same stations and fire trucks together as a team.
“We are together as the Eden Prairie Fire Department, with a goal to provide the best customer service and the best community care that we can,” Gerber said.
Gerber said the staffing expansion is projected to take eight to 10 years before all four stations will be staffed 24 hours a day.
“Adding additional full-time staff is going to allow us to consistently staff two of our stations, which will allow us to reduce overall response times in certain areas of our city,” Gerber said. “And it will allow us to continue to push out our expansion to get to staff three, maybe four, stations quicker.”