History of the Butler County Fire Chief's Association

The Butler County Fire Chief's Association has a rich history of active involvment with area emergency service organizations. If you have any factual information to add to this growing document, please send us an update to bcfca.training@gmail.com

Dating back to 1951, the Butler County Fire Chief's Association was tasked with providing the area "Fire School" during a time when the only formalize training that was accessable to firefighters was these County based fire training weekends. For years, Butler County Fire School provided training to firefighters all across the area, with enrollement numbers reaching over 600 participants in its best days. As time has moved forward, access to formal training has come with more ease and local firefighters can take a wide range of courses through local ETAs, Fire Departments, or even online. This progressive move had reduced the number of attendees to the weekend fire school and even risked cancelling the event all together.

In 2023, the Board of the Butler County Fire Chief's Association came together in effort to revamp the dynamic of "Fire School". The idea was to bring in nationally known instructional groups to offer training classes to local firefighters that are not readily available to them here. The 2023 Fire School Weekend pulled over 130 students participating in six courses taught by instrutors from accross the Country. The success of this event was important to ensure we could continue the tradition of providing some type of "weekend fire school" even if that dynamic modernized. The sucess is huge in honoring those many hands who helped build this organization into what it has become. We hope to continue to provide training and assistance to the area emergency services for years to come.

Joint Operating Committee (JOC)

The Joint Operating Committee (JOC) is a 30 year agreement created between the Butler County Fire Chief's Association and Butler County Community College established on December 6th, 2000 to a create a facility to train area emergency responders. The comittee is made up of seven (7) members, three (3) from Butler County Community College, Three (3) from the Butler County Fire Chief's Association, and one (1) appointed bu the County Commissioners. The mission of the JOC is to annually review and report on facility conditions, recommend guidlines for facility use, and recommend rate fees for use of the facility.