03/02/2026
Center Harbor Fire Department
2025 Annual Report
The Center Harbor Fire Department responded to 453 calls for service in 2025, approximately 25% of which were medical incidents. We continued to see steady trends in the remaining types of calls with alarm activations, motor vehicle accidents, and fires making up most of the remainder of the year. While our run total is below 2024’s record of 494 calls (which included 48 calls during a single spring weather event), we continue to see an overall upward trend in run numbers over the past 5 years, including a 100 call increase as compared to 2023. Our busiest days of the week were Friday and Saturday. Our dispatch to arrival time averaged 6.8 minutes during staffed hours and 11.3 minutes during unstaffed hours.
Staffing continues to be our paramount concern as it is with departments throughout the area. Challenges persist both in Center Harbor and in our surrounding communities with recruiting, training, and retaining enough qualified staff to ensure safe and effective responses to emergencies at all hours of the day. Since May 2024, we have budgeted to provide 10 hours of staffed coverage each day of the week with either 2 or 3 personnel at the station depending on the time of year. We continue to see the benefits of these day shifts with significant impacts on response time, readiness, training, and public service activities. Additionally, we continue to provide members a small stipend who sign up to cover from home on the overnight or weekend hours. These efforts have been successful overall, resulting in Center Harbor being unable to respond to only 2 incidents in 2025, both of which were calls that came in while another emergency was ongoing. We continue to have challenges staffing weekend day shifts and overnight stipends, a particularly concerning fact given our busiest days are Friday and Saturday. We continue to look into how we may be able to better staff our weekends more consistently year round while avoiding the significant expense of full time staffing. This year, we are proposing a modest increase in the wage line to assist with covering the cost of living increase and provide a financial incentive to cover the weekend shifts.
These efforts have not gone unnoticed and have made our Department attractive to applicants. We have brought on 4 new members in 2025 including some who come with advanced fire and EMS certifications. We welcome these new members and greatly appreciate their involvement! However, as with any organization, we did have some attrition with 3 members leaving in 2025. This includes David Hughes who has provided more than 50 years of service throughout the area with Center Harbor, Moultonborough and Tamworth. We would like to recognize and thank Dave for his many years of service!
The Department has seen an uptick in water based calls over the past few years, particularly on Lake Winnipesaukee. We are actively working on looking into the possibility of adding a boat to the fleet with the intention of having a larger, more capable craft to leave in the water at the Town dock and keep our current 17’ Boston Whaler on Squam Lake. Having boats at the ready and on the lake from Mid April through the end of November would greatly improve our response times to these incidents. The Department does still have a 12ft inflatable boat with a small outboard engine stored at the ready at Station 1 year round for the smaller bodies of water in town.
This year, the Department is looking for support to improve some current equipment and apparatus. We currently have several portable radios that are more than twenty years old and are not reliable for emergency operations. We are hoping to replace 10 of these radios in 2026. Additionally, we are planning to have our 22 year old engine evaluated for potential refurbishment in 2027. It is hoped that this vehicle could be kept reliably responding for another 10 years. Finally, we would like to improve the bathroom at Station two which is currently very close to being out of service. Thank you for your support with these items.
Training continues to be a major point of emphasis for the department and is essential to developing and maintaining the skills necessary to perform successfully in high stress environments during emergency calls. We continue to consolidate training with our surrounding communities to provide better opportunities at lower cost and ensure seamless interoperability with our mutual aid partners. Over the past year, Tuftonboro has joined with Center Harbor, Moultonboro, and Sandwich in these training opportunities. We constantly train in fireground operations, motor vehicle accidents and extrications, ice and open water rescues, technical and backcountry rescues, and emergency medical services at the basic and advanced levels. In addition, members have been pursuing education on their own time with members completing Firefighter 1, Firefighter 2, Paramedic, Driver/Operator, Supervisory Academy, and Fire Inspector certifications. Nice Job Team!!
CHFD would like to remind residents to test, maintain, and replace your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors have a service life of not more than 10 years and will not work properly if they are not replaced or maintained. Most detectors still require battery changes every 6 to 12 months. These devices save lives.
In addition to our members and the taxpayers of Center Harbor who continue to support our agency and our efforts, we wish to express our thanks to the many agencies we coordinate with including our mutual aid and automatic aid partners, the Center Harbor Police Department and their mutual aid partners, The New Hampshire State Police, The Center Harbor Highway Department and surrounding public works crews, NHDOT, NH Electric Co-op, the American Red Cross, and Lakes Region Mutual Fire Aid. Our job is made much easier and safer with the help of these organizations.
I would like to THANK all of our current fire department members and their families for their selfless efforts, continued dedication, and commitment to this wonderful community, and to our past members for their years of service. The department would also like to THANK our town residents, taxpayers and business owners for their continued support and dedication to the Fire Department.
Have a great day!
Tyler D. Driscoll
Fire Chief
