Firefighter Trivia
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This firefighter trivia quiz has 110 free questions with answers and covers the whole world of firefighting: the Roman vigiles and Ben Franklin's bucket brigade, the Great Fires of London and Chicago, the tools of the trade (Halligan bar, Pulaski, Jaws of Life, turnout gear), fire science like the fire triangle and the classes of fire, wildland crews such as smokejumpers and hotshots, and the shows and films that made firehouse life famous. It works for a firehouse fundraiser, a Fire Prevention Week classroom session, a family quiz night or a probie's first-week ribbing. Questions run from easy ones any kid can answer to genuinely hard department history that only a chief would know. Every answer was checked against primary sources and encyclopaedia entries before publishing, so you can read the answers out loud with confidence.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Roman emperor created the Vigiles, the first organised public firefighting force, in AD 6?
Augustus
Augustus founded the Vigiles in AD 6 after a run of serious fires: 7,000 men in seven cohorts, each patrolling two of Rome's fourteen districts, nicknamed the Sparteoli or 'little bucket fellows' after their esparto-grass buckets.
Q 02Which Alexandrian inventor developed the first fire pump in the third century BC?
Ctesibius
Ctesibius of Alexandria devised a double-cylinder force pump in the third century BC that could throw a jet of water; Hero of Alexandria described an improved version about three centuries later, and Europe reinvented such pumps only after 1500.
Q 03The Great Fire of London in 1666 began in a bakery on which street?
Pudding Lane
Thomas Farriner's bakery on Pudding Lane caught fire early on 2 September 1666; the blaze destroyed more than 13,000 houses and 87 parish churches, yet only a handful of deaths were officially recorded.
Q 04After the 1666 fire, London's first fire brigades were run by whom?
Insurance companies
Insurers protected only their own clients, whose buildings were marked with metal fire insurance marks so brigades knew which fires to fight.
Q 05Which Dutch artist and inventor's workshop developed the fire hose in the 1670s?
Jan van der Heyden
Jan van der Heyden, an Amsterdam painter who later ran the city's fire service, and his brother Nicolaes produced the first fire hoses in 1672: 50-foot lengths of leather sewn like a boot leg and joined with brass fittings.
Q 06Which American founding father established Philadelphia's Union Fire Company in 1736?
Benjamin Franklin
Nicknamed 'Franklin's Bucket Brigade', it was capped at 30 members and each had to keep six leather buckets and two stout linen bags marked with his name.
Q 07Which US city created the first fully paid, full-time professional fire department, on 1 April 1853?
Cincinnati
Cincinnati set up the first fully paid professional fire department on 1 April 1853, built around the first practical steam fire engine, 'Uncle Joe Ross', which needed far fewer men than a hand pumper.
Q 08In which year did Molly Williams, America's first known female firefighter, pull a pumper through a blizzard?
1818
Molly Williams, an enslaved woman known as 'Volunteer No. 11' of New York's Oceanus Engine Company, hauled the pumper through the blizzard of 1818 while most of the men were down with influenza.
Q 09The Great Chicago Fire broke out in the autumn of which year?
1871
The Great Chicago Fire began on 8 October 1871 and burned for two days; the same night the Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin killed between 1,200 and 2,500 people, the deadliest wildfire in American history.
Q 10Who admitted in 1893 to inventing the story of Mrs O'Leary's cow starting the Chicago fire?
A newspaper reporter
Reporter Michael Ahern confessed he made it up; the Chicago City Council formally exonerated the O'Learys in 1997.
Q 11US Fire Prevention Week falls in the week containing which date, in memory of the Great Chicago Fire?
9 October
Fire Prevention Week is the Sunday-to-Saturday span containing 9 October, the day the Chicago fire did its worst damage in 1871; a single national Fire Prevention Day had been proclaimed in 1920 before the week was established in 1925.
Q 12Which president proclaimed the first National Fire Prevention Week in 1925?
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge proclaimed the first National Fire Prevention Week in 1925; the Fire Marshals Association had marked a National Fire Prevention Day in 1911, the 40th anniversary of the Chicago blaze, and Woodrow Wilson one in 1920.
Q 13The three sides of the classic 'fire triangle' are heat, oxygen and what?
Fuel
Q 21George Hurst invented the Jaws of Life around 1961 after watching a slow extrication at what kind of event?
A stock car race
Hurst watched rescuers spend more than an hour freeing a driver after a stock car race crash in 1961; the 'Jaws of Life' name came from people saying the tool snatched victims from the jaws of death.
Q 22The first permanent fire pole, installed by Chicago's Engine Company 21 in 1878, was made of what?
Pine wood
Captain David Kenyon's crew shaved a Georgia pine beam into a 3-inch pole and varnished it; the first brass pole followed in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1880.
Q 23Why did Dalmatians become the traditional fire station dog?
Fuel completes the triangle with heat and oxygen; remove any one and the fire goes out. Add a fourth element, the chemical chain reaction, and you have the fire tetrahedron taught in modern training.
Q 14In the US classification system, a fire involving cooking oils and fats is which class?
K
Class K covers cooking oils and fats in the US system and is fought with wet-chemical extinguishers; Europe and Australia label the same kitchen fires Class F, and Europe has no class for electrical fires at all.
Q 15Burning magnesium, titanium or sodium is classed as which type of fire in the US?
D
Class D covers combustible metals such as magnesium, titanium and sodium; water can make them burn harder, so they are smothered with special dry powders instead.
Q 16A flashover, when everything in a room ignites almost at once, occurs at roughly what temperature?
900-1,200 °F
Flashover typically occurs when the gas layer at the ceiling reaches roughly 900-1,200 °F (about 500-650 °C); crews cool those gases with short bursts of water and ventilate precisely to keep a room from reaching that point.
Q 17What does the acronym SCBA stand for on a firefighter's back?
Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus
A Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus carries compressed air in a cylinder on the firefighter's back, typically rated for 30, 45 or 60 minutes, so crews never breathe the toxic smoke.
Q 18A PASS device worn by firefighters sounds an alarm when what happens?
The wearer stops moving
The Personal Alert Safety System lets a rapid-intervention team locate a downed colleague by sound in zero visibility.
Q 19The Halligan bar, the classic forcible-entry tool, was designed in 1948 by a deputy chief in which city?
New York City
Hugh Halligan, a First Deputy Chief of the New York City Fire Department, designed the bar in 1948; it combines a fork, an adze and a pick in one forged tool.
Q 20A Halligan bar paired with a flat-head axe is known in the fire service as what?
The irons
'The irons' are a Halligan bar and a flat-head axe carried together; the two partially interlock head-to-toe so one firefighter can carry the whole forcible-entry set in one hand.
They ran alongside horse-drawn engines to clear the way
Dalmatians get along unusually well with horses, and the puppies are born pure white, with spots appearing over the first weeks.
Q 24Under the NFPA colour code, a hydrant with a blue cap delivers how much water?
1,500 or more gallons per minute
A blue cap marks a Class AA hydrant flowing 1,500 gallons per minute or more under NFPA 291; green is 1,000-1,499, orange 500-999 and red under 500, so arriving crews know at a glance whether to call for more water.
Q 25How was the record of Frederick Graff's 1801 cast-iron hydrant invention lost?
It burned in the 1836 Patent Office blaze
The irony of the hydrant patent burning is a firehouse favourite; Graff's design became the standard American 'post' hydrant.
Q 26Which DuPont meta-aramid fibre became the classic flame-resistant shell fabric of turnout gear?
Nomex
Nomex, a meta-aramid DuPont commercialised in 1967, chars rather than melts and does not drip, which made it the standard outer-shell and hood fabric for turnout gear built to NFPA 1971.
Q 27In most US fire departments, a white helmet identifies whom?
A chief officer
White helmets mark chief officers in most US departments, red usually company officers such as lieutenants and captains, and black or yellow the firefighters; the ornamental eagle on the front dates to about 1825.
Q 28Canadian fire helmets often replace the traditional eagle ornament with which animal?
A beaver
Canadian helmets often carry a beaver, the national animal, where American ones have the eagle; the eagle finial itself began as a sculpture on a volunteer firefighter's grave around 1825 before migrating onto helmets.
Q 29A single section of standard attack hose is how long?
50 feet
Larger supply lines come in 100-foot lengths, and hoses are hung in station towers to dry because standing water rots the lining.
Q 30A tiller truck is distinctive because it has what?
Two drivers with separate steering wheels
The rear driver steers the trailer wheels, letting a very long ladder truck take sharp corners on narrow streets.