With 24-hour operations you may visit the fire station after working hours to purchase garbage bags, register your bicycles or check your blood pressure. And children are always welcome. In fact, the Bellaire Fire Department opens its doors to the Girl Scouts every year for cookie season. Re-dubbing it the cookie station, entrepreneurial scouts capitalize on its central location, using the station for a pick up and delivery post. The Bellaire Lions Club does the same every year when large shipments of grapefruits arrive for a Christmas sale.
Community groups are free to meet at the station, and firefighters encourage tours.
The complexity of our world with its myriad of synthetics, hazardous materials and high rise buildings makes fire fighting and emergency work today much more demanding than a few years ago. With the addition of emergency medical service, today's modern firefighter must have physical skills as well as technical expertise to deal with the many types of emergencies we respond to. All of our paid suppression personnel receive extensive training in fire fighting, hazardous materials, rescue, and emergency medical service. To be proficient in all these areas, our firefighters are required to undergo many hours of initial training in order to be qualified to serve our community. Besides the standard fire fighting and EMS training required of our personnel, many individuals have obtained more specialized training to become more skilled at their job.