Private Fire Department Grows Suburban Phoenix, Arizona, is the home of one of the most unusual fire departments in the country—a private fire department with six fire trucks, a payroll of 25 firemen and 5,000 subscribers. This novel fire-fighting outfit, headed by 25-year-old Louis Witzeman, is featured in the January issue of Pageant magazine in an article titled “He Bought a Fire Engine.” Witzeman’s private enterprise fire department, called the Rural Fire Protection Company, gets its revenue from the sale of annual subscriptions, ranging from $12 up, to homeowners, businessmen and farmers in a 101-squaremile area around Phoenix. It is now the third largest fire department in Arizona, outranked only by the municipal departments of Phoenix and Tucson. Before it was started in 1948, the big produce packing sheds along Phoenix’ “Lettuce Row” were burning down at the rate of one a year. Not a single shed has been lost…
