By Shelly Bradbury
The Denver Post
DENVER — For the first time in 16 years, the Denver Fire Department won’t train new firefighters this year because the agency is fully staffed, a spokesman confirmed Monday.
Fire officials last week decided to postpone the start of a new training academy until 2026 because the department is at 99.4% of its fully authorized strength of 1,114 employees, spokesman Luis Cedillo said.
The last time the department went a full year without holding at least one training academy was in 2009, he said.
The city’s Civil Service Commission notified applicants on Friday that the emergency medical technician training expected to start in May and the firefighter training expected to start in July were both postponed until 2026, executive director Gracie Perez said.
The commission will continue to move people through the hiring process so that the city has a pool of qualified applicants when the training academies reopen next year, Perez said. The commission has about 55 people in the running for the EMT training academy and 196 potential recruits for the firefighter academy, she said.
Another 600 applicants for the jobs at the fire department have already been screened out, she said.
The city had expected to hire eight EMT recruits and 24 firefighter recruits in 2025, Perez said. The number of recruits in each academy class and the number of classes per year regularly vary depending on the fire department’s staffing needs.
The Denver Fire Department expects only 11 retirements in 2025, which would put the agency at about 98.4% of its full staffing at the end of the year, Cedillo said.
“It has nothing to do with budget, it’s all related to staffing needs,” he said.
The pause on new firefighters comes as both the Denver Police Department and the Denver Sheriff Department have struggled to maintain full staffing in recent years.
The Denver Police Department is just over 90% staffed, with 1,532 officers and cadets of an authorized strength of 1,639 sworn officers. The Denver Sheriff Department is at about 71% of its full staffing, with 611 sworn staff out of a maximum 859.
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