February 2, 1948 — Lou Witzeman Founds Rural Metro | Scottsdale History

What happened

Lou Witzeman, a reporter for the Arizona Times living in the unincorporated desert between Phoenix and Scottsdale, watched a neighbor's home burn with no fire company willing to respond. On February 2, 1948 he founded Rural Fire Department — later Rural/Metro — buying a fire truck and going door to door selling annual subscriptions to households that would otherwise have no protection. When Scottsdale incorporated in 1951 it contracted with the company rather than form its own department.

Why it matters

Rural/Metro made Scottsdale the national showcase for privatized fire protection, studied by economists for half a century, and it was the reason the city had no fire department of its own until July 1, 2005. The company's first town hall — the fire station at Brown and Second — was also the town's, and Witzeman's one-truck brigade grew into a company serving hundreds of communities.

Nobody to call

In the winter of 1948 the settlement of Scottsdale was legally nothing — three years from incorporation, protected by the county sheriff and by nobody at all against fire. Lou Witzeman, a 22-year-old reporter for the Arizona Times living in the unincorporated desert on the Phoenix side of the line, found that out by watching a neighbor’s house burn to the ground while the nearest city department, with no obligation outside its limits, stayed home. On February 2, 1948 he decided to do something about it that no one in Arizona had tried: he founded a fire department as a business.

The Rural Fire Department began with one used truck and a subscription list. Witzeman went door to door selling annual memberships to households that would otherwise have no protection; subscribers got a response, non-subscribers got a bill if the truck came. The town’s other new institution that spring, the Scottsdale Progress, printed its first issue on May 6 and covered him. The firehouse at Brown Avenue and Second Street was, from 1952, also the rented Town Hall.

Fifty-seven years of a private fire department

When Scottsdale incorporated in June 1951 it faced the question every new town faces and answered it differently: rather than build a department it hired Witzeman’s, on contract. The arrangement lasted fifty-seven years. Rural/Metro, as the company became, was cheaper than a municipal service and its response times were good; Scottsdale became the case study economists cited and the model almost no other city copied, and the company grew into ambulance and fire contracts across the country.

The arrangement ended when the company, facing losses, gave notice in 2003, and on July 1, 2005 firefighters at every Scottsdale station changed shirts at midnight and became city employees. Witzeman’s profile is here; the postwar town he protected is in the 1940s chapter.