The Valdese Fire Department is a combination career/volunteer department operating out of one station, located at 121 Faet Street, SW. The department is currently staffed by nine career personnel and eighteen volunteers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Its career personnel include: Fire Chief, Assistant Fire Chief, Captain, Fire Inspector, Telecommunicator, and four Engineers. Our volunteer personnel consist of two Lieutenants, Safety Officer, and fifteen firefighters. The Fire Department provides E911 and telecommunications services, fire suppression and related incident management responsibilities. The safety and protection of Valdese citizens, courtesy, professionalism, customer satisfaction, and community service are its goals.

The Department's medical response team provides basic and advanced life support services to sick or injured persons prior to the arrival of EMS. Currently, twelve of the department's twenty-six members comprise the medical response team, ten of which are certified at the NC Emergency Medical Technician-Defibrillation level. This certification allows those personnel to perform cardiac shock within four minutes, thus increasing the victim's chances of survival by forty percent.

The department is certified by the State of North Carolina as a Wildland  Fire Suppression Fire Department. A department can only attain this certification if more than seventy-five percent of its members have completed the required training taught by Forest Service instructors. Members can be called upon by the State Forest Service to go anywhere in the state to assist with wildfire emergencies.

The Valdese Fire Department responds to over four hundred fire-related and medical calls per year. Fire-related responses include a wide variety of incidents such as structure fires, chemical spills, vehicle fires and accidents, industrial rescue, carbon monoxide investigations, and even the occasional feline rescue. Medical responses include: heart attacks, strokes, vehicle accidents, falls, attempted suicides, animal bites, and numerous other types of calls.