The Fridley Fire Department and Relief Association was founded in 1951 as the Village of Fridley under Chief William “Bill” Flannery. In 1956, Chief Bruce Timperley was appointed and the Department purchased its first ladder truck in 1957. Robert “Bob” Hughes replaced Timperley as Chief in 1959 and was later hired as the first full-time Chief in 1965.
Not coincidentally, 1965 marked the year of historical flooding and the Fridley Tornado. With a brand-new 1964 Fire Station, the City was poised to increase its fire and emergency services. In 1970, Local No. 1986 was established with three full-time firefighters.
Robert “Bob” Aldrich was hired in 1979 and would serve as Chief until 1991. During his time, Chief Aldrich adopted Professional Firefighter Standards, built current Fire Station #2, and Fire Station #3 (now the North Suburban Center of the Arts), and the Joint Fire Training Center which stood on the grounds of the current Fridley Civic Campus just behind Columbia Arena.
In 1991, Charles “Chuck” McKusick took the reigns as Chief and would serve until 2003. Chief John Berg was then hired, retiring just after the grand opening of the new Fridley Civic Campus and the creation of the Fridley Public Safety Department. In 2019, Michael “Mike” Spencer took over as Fire Chief until his surprising and untimely passing in 2020. Mike had a sudden cardiac arrest in his Fridley home and would later be pronounced deceased at the hospital on September 13, 2020. His death was memorialized as a Line-of-Duty Death by the State of MN and his named forever etched on the Minnesota Fallen Firefighters Memorial on the grounds of the MN State Capitol. After his passing, Maddison Zikmund was hired as the Fire Chief in January 2021.