The city of Orlando has 24 fire and rescue stations within its borders.  By looking at our MoveMap, you can see that the stations are distributed fairly evenly across Orlando, though there are more total facilities in the denser downtown areas than in suburbs.  Most fire stations are public and therefore run by the government, but a few are private.  The private stations are exclusively rescue stations, which respond to emergencies by transporting people to hospitals.

Fire stations are an essential part of any community; without them, emergencies simply wouldn’t be dealt with.  However, living near a fire station in Florida can have both pros and cons.  Notably, and not surprisingly, fire stations are loud and operate 24 hours a day.  This means that living near one can present some nuisances in the form of noise.  While most fire truck operators try to be respectful of residents, they will blare the horn if they need to, regardless of the time of day.  This is the case in downtown Orlando where most drivers will traverse the streets silently for as long as they can; however, if they’re in a hurry and they come to a stop sign or a traffic jam, they will turn on the siren.  Noise can be a nuisance for some people, but most get used to it.  As a resident of downtown Orlando, I can tell you that at first I noticed the sirens quite a bit, but now they rarely register with me and certainly don’t wake me up at night.

Even though noise can be annoying, there’s a benefit to having so many fire stations in Orlando.  Typically, response time to an incident is a function of distance from a fire station.  In reality, a great number of factors influence the response time on any given day, but distance is a big one – if you’re close to a fire station, you can generally expect a faster response than someone who lives far away.  And if you live close enough, you might even be able to get a reduced insurance rate; check with your provider.  Since most fire stations in Orlando also serve as rescue stations, elderly persons and those with chronic medical conditions should be aware of station locations, since in many cases living nearby one also means living near an emergency medical center.  You can determine which fire stations also serve as rescue centers by clicking on a point in our MoveMap.

On the down side, you should be aware that fire stations that also serve as rescue stations are a lot more active.  In other words, since they respond to more incidents, they create more noise, often at random times of day.  So if noise is a major concern for you, you might want to consider living a few blocks further away.

We hope that this blog post has helped you get a sense of how fire stations are distributed throughout Orlando as well as the functions that they serve.  The relatively even geographic distribution of stations means that most Orlando residents enjoy decent incident response times.  Living near a station can present both costs and benefits, so we encourage you to check out our MoveMap to see where the nearest fire station to you is, and what it does.  Good luck with your home search!