The Superior Fire Department is operating at full staff once again.  Four new members of the force were hired on this past week - making it a full house once again.  Currently there are 36 fire fighters on the payroll.  The new recruits will hit the ground running on Monday, February 1.

The department had plans to hire to that level in mid-2020 but had to put their plans on hold due to the COVID-19 Pandemic which shut down the hiring process for a few months.  The hiring search began again in August 2020 and these four new members are the result of that process. Two of the new members are from the immediate Duluth-Superior area, one hails from the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro and the fourth comes to the department from the East Coast.

According to news sources, 2020 was a record-setting year for the Superior Fire Department when it came to 911-response calls.  The crew responded to 4,044 calls in 2020.  Even working with a reduced staff for half the year, the department was able to fulfill their duties - a compliment to the firefighters on  the team.

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The new firefighters come to the departments budget as the result of a vote by the Superior City Council.  Three additional firefighter positions had been added in 2015 using "a series of federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grants".  Those grants were about to expire in 2019, when the city council decided to maintain the staffing levels and incorporate financing for those positions into their city's budget. Part of what made that funding available at the city level was an increase in oil terminal tax revenue.  News sources show that the city "allocated $67,000 from its general fund contingency and $130,000 from the oil pipeline terminal taxes for three positions".

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