This firefighter trivia quiz has 60 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 60 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
The Vigiles were 7,000 men in seven cohorts, each patrolling two of Rome's fourteen districts, and were nicknamed the Sparteoli, or 'little bucket fellows'.
Q 02Which Alexandrian inventor developed the first fire pump in the third century BC?
Ctesibius
Hero of Alexandria improved the design two centuries later; manual pumps then had to be rediscovered in Europe after 1500.
Q 03The Great Fire of London in 1666 began in a bakery on which street?
Pudding Lane
The blaze that started at Thomas Farriner's bakery destroyed more than 13,000 houses, 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
The first hoses were 50-foot lengths of leather sewn together 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
Even today the profession is largely voluntary: in 2015 about 70% of US firefighters were volunteers.
Q 08In which year did Molly Williams, America's first known female firefighter, pull a pumper through a blizzard?
1818
Williams, an enslaved woman known as 'Volunteer No. 11', stepped in when male firefighters were scarce during a cholera outbreak.
Q 09The Great Chicago Fire broke out in the autumn of which year?
1871
The same night, the Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin killed between 1,200 and 2,500 people, making it 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
President Coolidge proclaimed the first National Fire Prevention Week in 1925, after Woodrow Wilson's single Fire Prevention Day in 1920.
Q 12Which president proclaimed the first National Fire Prevention Week in 1925?
Calvin Coolidge
The Fire Marshals Association had first marked a National Fire Prevention Day in 1911, on the 40th anniversary of the Chicago blaze.
Q 13The three sides of the classic 'fire triangle' are heat, oxygen and what?
Fuel
Add a fourth element, the chemical chain reaction, and you have the fire tetrahedron taught in modern training.
Q 21George Hurst invented the Jaws of Life around 1961 after watching a slow extrication at what kind of event?
A stock car race
Workers had needed more than an hour to free the injured driver; the phrase 'Jaws of Life' 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?
Q 14In the US classification system, a fire involving cooking oils and fats is which class?
K
Europe and Australia label the same kitchen fires Class F, and Europe no longer has a specific class for electrical fires at all.
Q 15Burning magnesium, titanium or sodium is classed as which type of fire in the US?
D
Water can make combustible-metal fires worse, so they are fought 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
Crews cool the ceiling 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
It is usually paired with a PASS device that sounds an alarm if the wearer stops moving.
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's tool has a fork, an adze and a pick; married to a flat-head axe it becomes 'the irons'.
Q 20A Halligan bar paired with a flat-head axe is known in the fire service as what?
The irons
The two tools 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
Red marks the weakest hydrants; the colours let arriving crews decide instantly whether to call for more resources.
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 26Turnout gear is also called 'bunker gear' because the trousers and boots were traditionally kept where?
Beside the firefighters' bunks
Modern gear is built from heat-resistant aramids such as Nomex, Kevlar and PBI and must meet the NFPA 1971 standard.
Q 27In most US fire departments, a white helmet identifies whom?
A chief officer
Red helmets usually mark company officers such as lieutenants and captains; 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
The eagle finial itself began as a sculpture on a volunteer firefighter's grave around 1825 before it migrated 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.