02/18/2026
The Long Branch Fire Department is very proud of our nearly 150 years of volunteer service to our neighbors. We were home to Monmouth County's first volunteer fire company, were one of the charter departments of the New Jersey State Firemen's Association, and our second-ever Chief Thomas L. Worthley (1879-1880) served as President of the International Association of Fire Engineers in 1885--just eight years after the founding the organization now known as the IAFC - International Association of Fire Chiefs
The first volunteer fire department started in Philadelphia in 1736, born out of necessity and frustration. Fires were tearing through the city’s tightly packed wooden buildings, and there was no organized response. Just neighbors scrambling with buckets while homes burned. Benjamin Franklin helped change that by organizing the Union Fire Company, a group of everyday citizens who agreed that when the bells rang, they would respond.
These weren’t paid firefighters. They were shopkeepers, tradesmen, and neighbors who supplied their own leather fire buckets, ladders, and linen salvage bags, and even inspected one another’s homes for fire risks, an early form of fire prevention.
What made it revolutionary was the structure: elected officers, regular training, coordinated bucket brigades, and hand pumped engines. They focused on saving lives and property, not profit. That Philadelphia built system spread through the colonies and became the foundation of modern firefighting. This was proof that long before the country existed, Philly was already organizing to protect its own.
