Raleigh adds 12 firefighters, union says staffing still lags growth

Raleigh is adding 12 firefighters, but the city’s fire union says that still leaves residents thinner coverage when they dial 911 in a city where alarms and annexations are rising faster than staffing. International Association of Fire Fighters Local 548 argues Raleigh should have roughly 150 more firefighters than it has now, saying the budget does not close a gap that already shows up in overtime, vacancies and slower emergency coverage.

The divide centers on what happens in the first minutes of a fire or medical emergency. Raleigh’s fire master plan, released in July 2025, recommended 18 new firefighter positions as an immediate step to cut overtime, reduce burnout and improve alarm-response times. City officials instead approved 12 additions in the FY2027 budget, which the Raleigh City Council adopted at a work session on June 8. The city also made the second fire academy permanent, a move officials say will help keep new recruits moving into service.

Even with the new hires, the department is carrying significant staffing strain. City officials said there were 56 vacancies in May, after the department had just over 550 firefighter positions in March. The latest academy class graduated 20 firefighters, and each one is assigned to one of Raleigh’s 28 fire stations. That helps, but not enough to satisfy union leaders who say the city’s growth has outrun its public-safety expansion.

The master plan frames the problem in hard numbers. Raleigh’s annual fire-department incidents rose from about 47,000 in 2021 to almost 62,000 in 2025, while the city’s population grew about 8% over the same period. The plan says Raleigh’s citywide target is a first-arriving-unit benchmark of two minutes and 46 seconds, yet WRAL reported the plan found only 54% of first units reached the scene within the recommended timeframe and only 48% met effective response force goals. The plan also calls for two new ladder trucks and crews, along with longer-term station relocations or replacements.

Union leaders have also pushed back on annexation itself. They publicly opposed a proposed annexation on Jones Ridge Trail in northeast Raleigh after service-time analysis showed the first truck could arrive in about five minutes, but with only three firefighters aboard instead of the four the union considers standard for safe operations. That fight echoes a warning city budget staff made in 2023, when they said annexation growth could strain the budget and slow response times.

For Raleigh, the argument is no longer simply about hiring more people. It is about whether a fast-growing city can keep its fire coverage, station by station, in step with the neighborhoods it keeps adding.