By Sam McLaughlin
The Arizona Daily Sun,
FLAGSTFF, Ariz. — Big changes are coming to the Greater Flagstaff Region (GFR) firefighters’ academy in 2026.
Currently, applicants for vacancies at any of the seven agencies in the GFR — the Flagstaff Fire Department, Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting, Summit Fire & Medical District, Highlands Fire District, Ponderosa Fire District and Pinewood Fire District — must have completed the state-regulated Firefighter I and II classes, along with their Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) training.
Starting in July of next year, however, the Firefighter I and II classes will be integrated into the GFR academy, adding about six more weeks of training to the current 11-week academy. The change is intended to lower the barrier to entry for potential applicants who might have limited time or financial resources to complete college-level courses while working or balancing other responsibilities.
“We feel like it’s going to benefit the region with recruitment and personnel,” Flagstaff firefighter and regional training Chief Kyle Denham said. “There’s going to be some challenges with it, there’s going to be some risk associated with it, but we think the benefits are going to outweigh that.”
Recruitment is the primary driver behind the change to the academy structure. Fire departments in and around Flagstaff are receiving fewer applications today than in the past.
During the GFR’s last hiring cycle, 13 new firefighters graduated from the academy — but there were 15 vacancies in the region.
Having open positions go unfilled was “unheard of” 20 years ago, said Kevin Wiles, a Flagstaff captain-paramedic. As departments began to carry over vacancies in the last few years, GFR members began to discuss the possibility of a “green academy” (one with fewer prerequisites).
Since this spring, Denham and Wiles have met multiple times with the region’s chiefs and labor representatives to work out the framework for the change.
“I wouldn’t say there was resistance, but there were a lot of questions,” Denham said.
Some of the details remain to be worked out, but Denham is confident that the changes will increase the region’s pool of potential applicants and help stabilize staffing levels long term.
“I use my neighbor as an example,” he said. “Has a young family, owns a business, doesn’t have the time to go to school. And there’s a lot of people like him who want to do it, but they just don’t have the time or the money to go to school.”
Along with the green academy, GFR will offer a new “lateral” academy for firefighters looking to transfer from elsewhere in the state. That will run parallel to the green academy, during the weeks when new recruits are completing their Firefighter I and II classes.
“That way, if somebody is not successful in that lateral, but … we’ve hired them and we want to keep them, we can recycle them into the GFR academy at week seven,” Denham explained.
Recruits who have already completed their Firefighter I and II certifications will also start at that point, learning the GFR’s way of doing things alongside the other candidates and graduating at the same time.
“It’s really a way to capture lots of different people,” Denham said.
Diminished interest in the fire service as a profession is not unique to Flagstaff.
“It is a statewide, if not nationwide, issue,” said Jake Rhoades, president of the Arizona Fire Chiefs Association.
The reasons for the decline are not perfectly understood, but studies by Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona have identified some commonly cited factors, including the stress and risks of the job, the atypical shift schedule and the opportunity for higher pay in other industries.
“We work in a very hazardous industry,” Rhoades said. “And there’s a generation that might see something different. It’s not as glamorous to some people [as] it once was.”
Addressing the drop in interest will require a multifaceted approach, he noted: “There’s no one magic button that’s going to work for any one department out there.”
Some agencies, like Rhoades’ own Buckeye Fire-Medical-Rescue Department, have expanded their outreach efforts to include local high schools.
“Those kids that want to go into the fire service, I want to provide them a pathway,” Rhoades explained.
Similarly, GFR operates a mentorship program called the House of Jacks that helps prospective firefighters learn from current staff and prepare for the physical and mental demands of the job.
Other departments have made the change to a green academy — and have seen success from that change. One of those is the 11-station Northwest Fire District near Tucson . Division chief of training Ian Cassidy said the switch has helped the district to “produce a better-quality firefighter at the end of our academies now than we had before.”
“In the training environment, you really want to have a consistent foundation upon which to build,” Cassidy said.
Since 2021, Northwest Fire District has operated a 21- to 23-week academy that includes Firefighter I and II and EMT certification. By controlling the training process from start to finish, Cassidy said, the district is able to give recruits the most consistent experience possible.
The district is also able to incorporate community expectations and its own local priorities into recruits’ training from the very beginning.
“We’re able to do a lot more training in decision-making and critical thinking,” Cassidy said. “And it’s really important to us, as an organization, to be able to make better decision-makers out of our firefighters at a much earlier point in their career.”
The change has also made a career in the fire service more accessible to a broader pool of candidates, Cassidy said. He cited the example of a friend who was working in information technology (IT), without any of the typical prerequisites for a firefighting job.
“By having a green academy, he was able to do a full career change from IT to firefighting, and now he’s a decade into that,” Cassidy said.
He added: “I think we definitely get a more diverse group of candidates from other fields. And those other fields bring in a heck of a lot of perspective that maybe we would be missing otherwise.”
The change is not without its challenges. Perhaps chief among those is the increased time commitment for a department’s instructors, who are often the same people staffing the stations and engines.
“We had had the problem of taking operational personnel from the field each and every academy and utilizing them to instruct these recruit fire academies,” Casidy said. “We don’t do that anymore.”
His district now has enough personnel dedicated solely to training that they don’t need to pull line staff for instructors.
That isn’t the case for the GFR.
“One thing that we do still need to figure out is trying to expand our cadre of instructors,” Denham acknowledged.
The region typically trains one or two academy classes per year, depending on need, and two 17-week academies would be “a big lift” for the current instructors.
“That’s going to be a balance that we have to work out, for sure,” he said.
Fortunately, GFR’s instructors will be supported by Coconino Community College (CCC) in the Firefighter I and II portions of the academy. CCC has offered those courses for years — it’s where most GFR applicants have received their certifications in the past — and its instructors will work alongside GFR staff.
The college will also provide textbooks and other course materials and coordinate the state-regulated testing for the Firefighter I and II classes.
Denham said he was grateful for the strong working relationship between CCC and the region’s fire departments.
For now, GFR will not integrate EMT training into its academy. Though some districts have done so, such as Northwest Fire, Denham said that would be “a whole other can of worms.” It would require different instructors, he noted, and extend the length of the academy.
Wiles noted that there are also more options available for EMT certification than there are for Firefighter I and II, including online and hybrid programs.
Despite the effort involved in making the switch, Denham and Wiles were optimistic about the benefits. Denham said he expects to see a broader pool of applicants, hopefully including local residents who might previously have been deterred by the prerequisites.
GFR is “trying to get those people that live in our community to work with us and protect their own,” he said.
Cassidy, of Northwest Fire, said he believes the new academy structure is a worthwhile commitment.
“Honestly, I think it’s a positive change,” he said. “I think the department and the community will both see a lot of positive things come out of it.”
And Rhoades, head of the Arizona Fire Chiefs Association, said the change was a necessary part of the fire service’s adaptation to current realities.
“We gotta change the script a little bit” when it comes to recruitment and retention, Rhoades said. But he added, “We’re still looking at one of the best professions in the world to serve the communities and serve our fellow man.”
More information about job openings and hiring processes at the Flagstaff Fire Department is available at flagstaff.az.gov/3681.
© 2025 The Arizona Daily Sun (Flagstaff, Ariz.).
Visit www.azdailysun.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
