How to Start Your Own Lego Fire Department

Lego City Fire Department

I get asked at least once a month about how a person can start their own Lego Fire Department (LFD). It is the intent of this page to describe the basic ideas and steps concerning starting your own LFD and putting it online.

Myths

The first thing that needs to be cleared up is that you don't have to have 16 fire stations and over 100 fire trucks to have a LFD. My personal inspiration has only 3 fire stations. It only takes 1 fire truck to have a LFD. When the Lego City Fire Department first started, we began with one engine and four firefighters using one small building, which was made from cardboard. I hadn't even heard of the internet at that time. That was back in 1982. Things have changed since then.

First Things First

The first thing you have to do to start a LFD is have the desire, which you probably do since you're reading this, and a Lego fire truck. There are many ways to accomplish this. You can purchase the newest sets from any quality retail store. Another method is garage sales and that sort of thing. A highly recommended way to purchase sets, especially older sets, is via the newsgroup "rec.toys.lego" (aka RTL). This has many, many resources for Legos. RTL has proven to be LCFD's most valuable resource. I purchased more than half of my collection via RTL within the past year and a half. Once you have a piece of apparatus, you're ready to move on.

Organizing the FD

Now that you have a piece of apparatus, you have a fews things you need to do, the first of which should be a name for your LFD and it's host jurisdiction, most commonly a city, though counties are also common, especially in the fire service. What you do from there is upto you and what you want to do with your LFD. Everyone does things differently. You can get ideas from this web site or by visiting some of the other LFD's by following links via the Links Page.

Pictures

This is probably the most important aspect of the LFD. The pictures of your fire department, it's fire trucks and stations are why people will visit and contact your LFD. Use any camera to take the pictures. Then get them developed. The next step, and sometimes the most difficult for some people, is getting the developed pictures scanned. If you don't have a scanner of your own, you can goto any copy business (such as Kinkos) and they will scan them and put them on a floppy disk for you for a minimul fee. Lastly, load those scanned pictures (also called pics) onto the web site.

Options

Following are some of the things you can do:

a) name your personnel.

c) create fire and ems calls for the PageNet

d) provide links to other sites and other LFDs.

e) provide run statistics for your LFD.

f) form mutual aid agreements with other LFDs as well as joining a LFD association. There are currently two that I know of. LCFD belongs to the Metro Area Fire Departments.

g) calculate your LFD's ISO Rating. For more details, contact LCFD for details and the calculator for determing your LFD's ISO Rating. This requires some details on a Lego city.

h) keep minutes of your LFD. This is a great way to keep track of the events taking place with your LFD. Either contact LCFD and I'll email our latest month minutes and you can use that as a base or create your own.

Again, the options are endless. Exactly what you do or don't do is totally upto you.

Written or Offline Records

For the first 16 years of the Lego City Fire Department, we were not online. I conducted everything on paper and offline. I didn't have pictures, but I kept Monthly Meeting Notes. These included any sets I purchased or built and any other major changes or additions. I STRONGLY recommend doing this. Even though you're online, this provides an excellent journal of your LFD's growth. Unfortunately, I didn't start doing this until 1992, ten years after LCFD began. I REALLY wish I had started it from day one.

Towns with LFDs

Many people have Lego towns or cities that have a fire station in them. If that is you, feel free to form a LFD. Rather than concentrating on just your LFD, simply create a seperate page of information on just your LFD. My inspiration did exactly this. This is, by all means, perfectly acceptable. Again, don't think you have to have a huge LFD - you don't!

In summary, the exact details are too vast to fully explain here. It is my hope that this page provides a mild map of the direction you should take in creating a Lego Fire Department. Good luck and as we say in the Lego Fire Service- "Stay safe and happy building."

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URL: http://members.aol.com/LCFDFireChief/lcfd.htm

This page was last updated on 8-19-01