National Fire Academy
The National Fire Academy (NFA) is one of two schools in the United States operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at the National Emergency Training Center (NETC) in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Operated and governed by the United States Fire Administration (USFA) as part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the NFA is the country’s pre-eminent federal fire training and education institution. The original purpose of the NFA as detailed in a 1973 report to Congress was to “function as the core of the Nation’s efforts in fire service education—feeding out model programs, curricula, and information…”
The NFA shares its 107-acre (0.43 km2) Emmitsburg campus with the Emergency Management Institute (EMI) operated by the Directorate of Preparedness branch of FEMA. The campus also includes the Learning Resource Center (LRC) library, the National Fire Data Center, and the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial.
The campus was the original site of Saint Joseph’s Academy, a Catholic school for girls from 1809 until 1973. It was purchased by the U.S. Government in 1979 for use as the NETC.
In 2008, the National Fire Academy trained over 122,000 first responders from all 50 States.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon assembled a 20-member blue-ribbon panel of experts in the field of fire protection to study the country’s alarming fire problem and the related needs of the American fire services. Chaired by Richard E. Bland, an associate professor at Pennsylvania State University, the group became known as the National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control (NCFPC). The NCFPC and its staff published a report titled America Burning on May 4, 1973. Included in the report was the NCFPC’s recommendation to establish a permanent U.S. Fire Administration “to provide a national focus for the Nation’s fire problem, and to promote a comprehensive program with adequate funding to reduce life and property loss from fire.”
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