The Fort Lupton Fire Protection District (FLFPD) is a combination fire department dedicated to delivering high-quality emergency services to the citizens of Fort Lupton, Colorado, and surrounding rural areas. Our department responds to a wide range of incidents including structure fires, wildland fires, emergency medical calls, hazardous materials situations, technical rescues, and public service emergencies.
We operate out of multiple stations with a team of career and volunteer personnel who are committed to safety, professionalism, and continuous improvement. Fort Lupton Fire emphasizes training, community risk reduction, and strong mutual aid relationships to ensure we meet the evolving needs of the region.
Whether we’re responding to an emergency or engaging with the community through education and outreach programs, our mission remains the same: to protect lives, property, and the environment with courage, compassion, and integrity.
Fort Lupton Fire Department — Honest Review from a Former Employee
I’ll keep it brief and to the point. As an ex-employee, here’s what I have to say:
• The fire chief has been in place far too long, and it shows. Leadership feels stagnant and resistant to change.
• Pay is solid, and most of the equipment is relatively modern, though some key tools and upgrades are still missing.
• There is no overtime offered, regardless of staffing shortages. The department would rather run short than call people in — even if that puts the safety of the community and responders at risk.
Plenty of good people still work there, but the culture and leadership need a serious reset.
One thing that was said at my new department that really stuck with me is that “The employees are what make the department”. They value all of us, and it has been a great change. Fort Lupton has great employees, but the department does not have this attitude. Unfortunately, I found myself in a search for a new department due to how a specific Lieutenant treats people under him. The extreme mismatch of how he operates compared to others was astonishing. He may have the best intentions, he goes about it the wrong way. Him being allowed to conduct himself in the way he does spoke volumes about management above him. If you have any issues at the department, you pretty much get told to deal with it, or the most common saying; that’s the way it’s always been. It becomes quickly discouraging when you hear other Lieutenant’s comment “if they dont like it, they can go elsewhere”. This may have been the attitude 15 years ago, but their low retention shows that their attitude is antiquated at best. The current chief was always respectful to me, but there is zero point in bringing up anything to him when leaving. His attitude has always been “my way or the highway”, and so many issues with morale stem from him. That being said, he he’s very passionate and protective of the district, and had put it in a great place financially, but he has been in his position likely too long.
Sadly, the department is ran by fear from the top down. If you are to ever ask a Lieutenant why you do something, you are told something along the lines of “because of an unwritten rule from an email 10 years ago”. Everyone is constantly in fear of being chewed out by the chief, and avoids the Administration building.
The department offers many opportunities to advance your self with trainings, but you will do many on your own time without pay. Any certificate you recieve, is required to be maintained.
New and well maintained apparatus.
Line staff bond well, and overall seem to have good morale due to eachother.
There is no acting pay, but you are expected to be able to do all roles and accept the liability for such.
There are no opportunities for Ovetime pay. (When one does come, there are scathing emails from the current chief sent out due to the overtime not getting picked up quickly enough.)
Shorts are not permitted unless performing yard work, it’s after 12pm on a Sunday, or 5pm on a week day. (Be prepared to be hot)
Work outs are required, but you are not allowed to do so until at least 4pm. Many Lieutenants do not make this a priority for themselves and their crews, and will run errands during this small window.
There are Holidays that are in the S.O.Gs, but the Fire Chief has been known to make it a normal work day. There are also Holidays that Admin will be off, but line staff are expected to treat it as a normal day.
Vacation time is actually pretty good there. Unfortunately, it’s a convoluted and slow process, there’s a high chance it won’t be approved until last minute, and you will be under the constant threat that it will be revoked (instead of allowing people to get Overtime).
Insurance is fantastic, and the department contributes greatly to it.
Some benefits the department are fairly common for departments, but will be treated as if you just had them bestowed upon you.
Crews are expected to do Fire Inspections for businesses, even though the department has fire prevention. This is another short coming that exposes the department to further liability.
The department has a great preplan program that allows them the ability to get into businesses and know what’s going on. If they got rid of the Inspections for crews, and required all crews to visit and tour specific businesses every month, that would be far more beneficial.
The stations are great quality. They have 3 stations which are well kept. They have nice kitchens, gyms, and bedrooms.
One of the biggest changes for me leaving Fort Lupton was the fact that we weren’t bogged down with stuff from Admin and Fire Prevention constantly. If you work for Fort Lupton, be prepared to be over worked constantly.
There are cameras all around all the facilities, but they seem to be there more as a “I got you” for the chief to watch consistently.
The department has a community that loves them and values them.
The department runs ALOT of really bad car accidents, so there’s a pride in the ability to extricate patients.
Poor management tactics aside, the ENTIRE department is wholeheartedly there for the community, and this sets the department aside from some of its counterparts.
The department is professional, they provide training with lawyers to avoid future issues, and the chief sends out emails with issues that happened elsewhere to help prevent it happening at his department. This is a good thing.
The department is not a city department, which is positive, because it prevent the city from appropriating funds from the departments budget.
I’m sure there’s plenty of other things. I would still be working at Fort Lupton if I had a different Lieutenant. Thankfully, I had bad luck and that caused me to land where I am now. I will always miss all the people I worked there with. The fact that the department does not value its staff, does not mean they dont have amazing staff. They work tirelessly to provide superior service to the community they serve.
The fire chief has done wonders for this department and got it to where he has, but with time, he seems to have “lost the vision” as my new Captain has put it. Things have become stagnant, and if a new Interim Chief stepped in tomorrow, things would be better within 6 months or less.
If asked, I would tell someone it’s a good department to work for. For the calls, for the community, and for the other people that work there. I would not work there for the management. There are several of their Lieutenants and staff in their Admin that need to either step down, or retire.
The pay and benefits are competitive. Overall the facilities and equipment are solid and up to date. It has a solid community backing. The people in operations (line staff from BC to the FF) are well trained (by there own doing) and have a wide range of diverse skills sets.
It would have been great to refer and recruit candidates for the department. So what’s the problem? The Chief. The king. The dictator. The tyrant. He controls and micromanages every aspect of the department down to how to pull weeds around stations. He has intelligent, knowledgeable, experienced personnel that aren’t allowed to take a cr*p without being told how to. You must constantly prove you are not a criminal but are treated like you are (he comes from a probation background, go figure…). He’s as inconsistent as a snowflake. He supervises by intimidation and threats. He’s a bully that fears no consequences. The Chief believes he can take over incidents from his soft office chair and in doing so, uses endless radio chatter running over his officers – the ones that are actually on scene attempting to do their job. He will not allow facts or accuracy to enter the conversation and denies anyone’s ability to give such information as it would defeat his narrative (and get you disciplinary action). He has zero line experience but will most definitely tell you he knows more than anyone about all aspects of the front line job and career shiftwork. He’s held no paid position in the fire service other than Chief. He’s feels threatened by the skill sets of his people which puts his narcissism into overdrive. And he does it to absolutely everyone. He won’t allow his officers to actually be officers. They are just titles to be blamed for everything. They get beat down daily. The department is years overdue for change at the Chief level but is backed by a board that he runs. They know what he’s like but are afraid to control it. To add insult to injury, he freely runs his personnel down especially behind their back to outside agencies or to anyone that will listen. The fire world is a small world. His actions quickly get back to the very people he runs down. The department has lost dozens of experienced personnel, some with more than a decade of service to the department. With less than 40 line staff, turn over to this magnitude is a significant setback. You are always in the rebuilding mode. You’d think this would be a red flag to the Board. Recently informed that a union was formed. He’s the perfect example of why unions come about.
The department has all the financial and personnel assets to be a great department. Its a great community that is steadily growing. Until he leaves, the department will be mired in a sluggish pool of poor management feeding an already tanked morale. Hopefully no one is foolish enough to allow him to be on the board if he does get replaced.
Fort Lupton Fire is proof that the grass IS greener on the other side.
The fire chief was a vollie for a long time and career law enforcement. He was hired as the first career chief with no fire or EMS certs. He’d tell a horse he could lead it to water and take it to the glue factory instead.
If you wanna do office work in a polo from 0700-1700 everyday, be required to workout an hour every day (but not before 1700, not be aloud to touch the recliners or take a nap regardless of how many calls you ran the night before, and run a suicide crew because they refuse to pay overtime to staff their rigs, Fort Lupton Fire is the place for you!
We had a team to spec out a new engine. The chief went and bought what he wanted instead.
We wanted to change nozzles. The chief let people do research and build a presentation for months, and then told them he wasn’t changing anything before their meeting started.
We wanted to aggressively fight fires. The chief had no tactical clue what he was doing and burned down dozens of buildings.
We wanted to run with the departments around us, none of them would call us because it was such a mess (including the smaller agencies).
We wanted to get better at EMS. The chief wasn’t even an EMT and wouldn’t allow the department to get equipment that was well within it’s BLS scope.
We wanted our station officers to be aloud to run their stations and lead. Nope, they had to call the fire chief for everything.
Sad part is, the calls were amazing. It’s straight up ghetto firefighting. Lots of working fires…
The fire chief is the worst example of leadership I have ever witnessed and I’ve been on the job 17 years at this point. He literally fights against crews having firehouse culture. He wouldn’t even let people hang pictures on the wall in the stations. Heck, he wrote up his entire career staff of 20 people once.
The officers are okay but most of them are promoted because they kiss his ring, not based off of their leadership …actually a lot of them are terrible too. Blind leading the blind leading the common sense folks who quit. Just look at how much turn around the department has.
I’m incredibly thankful for the time I spent working at Fort Lupton because it changed my perspective. My worst day at my new department is exponentially better than my best day ever was at Fort Lupton. I remember the chief telling me not to leave because I would never get the opportunities at a bigger department that I could get at Fort Lupton …yeah so that was a lie
Man oh man where to start. Ill list the good things because its WAY shorter. The line guys are absolutely amazing. They care about and have passion for the job and id absolutely give my life for each and every one of them. The facilities and rigs were all new and well taken care of… and thats about it for the good.
The bad and the ugly; admin is without a doubt the worst admin ive ever seen or heard of (I have ~70 years of firefighting experience in my family and NONE of them have heard of worse) the penis potato (dictator) (chief. Keeping it in lowercase because he doesnt deserve the respect) in charge thinks hes not only gods gift to firefighting, but the world. He literally told me one time, word for word, “you see that *pointing to ‘chief’ on his name plate* that means my word is God’s word” which was the beginning of the end of my career here.
He really has no firefighting experience. He started as a volly, got volly chief at like 25 (red flag), and then got full time chief when they went that route because he went to high school with the board members (another red flag).
His disconnect with day to day life in the firehouse is so far gone you might as well try and get a wifi connection on Saturn. Weekend or holiday? Too bad you’re wearing class Bs until 5 (oh but admin is off or leaves at noon), got your ass handed to you the night before? Too bad up at 6:30 better be doing busy work by 7:30 or its a write up, wanna take a safety nap because of said ass kicking? Write up, TV on at lunch or before 5? Write up… you get the point. Dude hands out more write ups than pages on the hub. Oh and involved in all those write ups is his “disciplinary meeting” which includes him and his weasel lackey belittling you for about 2-3 hours, when really it could have been an email homie. But he makes sure his yes man is in there (usually under his desk) to hear it all so if you wanna go to a lawyer for hostile work environment, good luck. Its 2 on 1 at that point. You are ALWAYS guilty until proven innocent (spoiler alert: never happens)
He rules with an iron fist. You want vacation, Kelly day, or trade? He has to approve it. Sick time? Ope its gotta get signed off by him when you get back. All this because he absolutely REFUSES to hire OT and would rather the crews and the citizens be at a greater danger. And the best part is if youre on his bad side? Good luck getting any of that approved! But you ask him and he doesnt hold grudges, make it make sense. Wanna change a hose load (or anything for that matter) on the rigs? Gotta go through him, yet he hasnt pulled a hose in about 25 years. You know the more I write the more I realize if he had any more red flags id probably be dating him
Oof okay had a lot to get out there. The guys want to be aggressive and true firefighters but the department is so safety conscious that they just cant. “Safety first” no. Safety third, saving lives first no matter the risk. Thats the oath you swore to take and you will die by it if need be. “You should be cautious and knowledgeable, but not afraid. Fear does not save lives, it endangers it” the guys train their asses off though regardless and just work around all the rules.
Funny thing is my blood pressure dropped 20 points and my drinking problem stopped after leaving here (like actually not just telling my wife it did then sneaking garage beers when shes asleep)
All in all just know what youre getting into here. Use it to build the resume, and get out ASAP. Like someone said earlier the grass is absolutely greener on the other side. For the love of god dont let this be your one and only view of the fire service. Its the best job in the world and if youre not having fun doing it, something is wrong.
Man I hope this is actually anonymous or I just know el jefe (bi lingual lowercase #MultiTalanted) is gonna have the lawyer on the phone SO fast
Rating Breakdown
1/5
1.8/5
3.4/5
2/5
5 Reviews on “Fort Lupton Fire Protection District”
Fort Lupton Fire Department — Honest Review from a Former Employee
I’ll keep it brief and to the point. As an ex-employee, here’s what I have to say:
• The fire chief has been in place far too long, and it shows. Leadership feels stagnant and resistant to change.
• Pay is solid, and most of the equipment is relatively modern, though some key tools and upgrades are still missing.
• There is no overtime offered, regardless of staffing shortages. The department would rather run short than call people in — even if that puts the safety of the community and responders at risk.
Plenty of good people still work there, but the culture and leadership need a serious reset.
A honest review of my experiences.
One thing that was said at my new department that really stuck with me is that “The employees are what make the department”. They value all of us, and it has been a great change. Fort Lupton has great employees, but the department does not have this attitude. Unfortunately, I found myself in a search for a new department due to how a specific Lieutenant treats people under him. The extreme mismatch of how he operates compared to others was astonishing. He may have the best intentions, he goes about it the wrong way. Him being allowed to conduct himself in the way he does spoke volumes about management above him. If you have any issues at the department, you pretty much get told to deal with it, or the most common saying; that’s the way it’s always been. It becomes quickly discouraging when you hear other Lieutenant’s comment “if they dont like it, they can go elsewhere”. This may have been the attitude 15 years ago, but their low retention shows that their attitude is antiquated at best. The current chief was always respectful to me, but there is zero point in bringing up anything to him when leaving. His attitude has always been “my way or the highway”, and so many issues with morale stem from him. That being said, he he’s very passionate and protective of the district, and had put it in a great place financially, but he has been in his position likely too long.
Sadly, the department is ran by fear from the top down. If you are to ever ask a Lieutenant why you do something, you are told something along the lines of “because of an unwritten rule from an email 10 years ago”. Everyone is constantly in fear of being chewed out by the chief, and avoids the Administration building.
The department offers many opportunities to advance your self with trainings, but you will do many on your own time without pay. Any certificate you recieve, is required to be maintained.
New and well maintained apparatus.
Line staff bond well, and overall seem to have good morale due to eachother.
There is no acting pay, but you are expected to be able to do all roles and accept the liability for such.
There are no opportunities for Ovetime pay. (When one does come, there are scathing emails from the current chief sent out due to the overtime not getting picked up quickly enough.)
Shorts are not permitted unless performing yard work, it’s after 12pm on a Sunday, or 5pm on a week day. (Be prepared to be hot)
Work outs are required, but you are not allowed to do so until at least 4pm. Many Lieutenants do not make this a priority for themselves and their crews, and will run errands during this small window.
There are Holidays that are in the S.O.Gs, but the Fire Chief has been known to make it a normal work day. There are also Holidays that Admin will be off, but line staff are expected to treat it as a normal day.
Vacation time is actually pretty good there. Unfortunately, it’s a convoluted and slow process, there’s a high chance it won’t be approved until last minute, and you will be under the constant threat that it will be revoked (instead of allowing people to get Overtime).
Insurance is fantastic, and the department contributes greatly to it.
Some benefits the department are fairly common for departments, but will be treated as if you just had them bestowed upon you.
Crews are expected to do Fire Inspections for businesses, even though the department has fire prevention. This is another short coming that exposes the department to further liability.
The department has a great preplan program that allows them the ability to get into businesses and know what’s going on. If they got rid of the Inspections for crews, and required all crews to visit and tour specific businesses every month, that would be far more beneficial.
The stations are great quality. They have 3 stations which are well kept. They have nice kitchens, gyms, and bedrooms.
One of the biggest changes for me leaving Fort Lupton was the fact that we weren’t bogged down with stuff from Admin and Fire Prevention constantly. If you work for Fort Lupton, be prepared to be over worked constantly.
There are cameras all around all the facilities, but they seem to be there more as a “I got you” for the chief to watch consistently.
The department has a community that loves them and values them.
The department runs ALOT of really bad car accidents, so there’s a pride in the ability to extricate patients.
Poor management tactics aside, the ENTIRE department is wholeheartedly there for the community, and this sets the department aside from some of its counterparts.
The department is professional, they provide training with lawyers to avoid future issues, and the chief sends out emails with issues that happened elsewhere to help prevent it happening at his department. This is a good thing.
The department is not a city department, which is positive, because it prevent the city from appropriating funds from the departments budget.
I’m sure there’s plenty of other things. I would still be working at Fort Lupton if I had a different Lieutenant. Thankfully, I had bad luck and that caused me to land where I am now. I will always miss all the people I worked there with. The fact that the department does not value its staff, does not mean they dont have amazing staff. They work tirelessly to provide superior service to the community they serve.
The fire chief has done wonders for this department and got it to where he has, but with time, he seems to have “lost the vision” as my new Captain has put it. Things have become stagnant, and if a new Interim Chief stepped in tomorrow, things would be better within 6 months or less.
If asked, I would tell someone it’s a good department to work for. For the calls, for the community, and for the other people that work there. I would not work there for the management. There are several of their Lieutenants and staff in their Admin that need to either step down, or retire.
The pay and benefits are competitive. Overall the facilities and equipment are solid and up to date. It has a solid community backing. The people in operations (line staff from BC to the FF) are well trained (by there own doing) and have a wide range of diverse skills sets.
It would have been great to refer and recruit candidates for the department. So what’s the problem? The Chief. The king. The dictator. The tyrant. He controls and micromanages every aspect of the department down to how to pull weeds around stations. He has intelligent, knowledgeable, experienced personnel that aren’t allowed to take a cr*p without being told how to. You must constantly prove you are not a criminal but are treated like you are (he comes from a probation background, go figure…). He’s as inconsistent as a snowflake. He supervises by intimidation and threats. He’s a bully that fears no consequences. The Chief believes he can take over incidents from his soft office chair and in doing so, uses endless radio chatter running over his officers – the ones that are actually on scene attempting to do their job. He will not allow facts or accuracy to enter the conversation and denies anyone’s ability to give such information as it would defeat his narrative (and get you disciplinary action). He has zero line experience but will most definitely tell you he knows more than anyone about all aspects of the front line job and career shiftwork. He’s held no paid position in the fire service other than Chief. He’s feels threatened by the skill sets of his people which puts his narcissism into overdrive. And he does it to absolutely everyone. He won’t allow his officers to actually be officers. They are just titles to be blamed for everything. They get beat down daily. The department is years overdue for change at the Chief level but is backed by a board that he runs. They know what he’s like but are afraid to control it. To add insult to injury, he freely runs his personnel down especially behind their back to outside agencies or to anyone that will listen. The fire world is a small world. His actions quickly get back to the very people he runs down. The department has lost dozens of experienced personnel, some with more than a decade of service to the department. With less than 40 line staff, turn over to this magnitude is a significant setback. You are always in the rebuilding mode. You’d think this would be a red flag to the Board. Recently informed that a union was formed. He’s the perfect example of why unions come about.
The department has all the financial and personnel assets to be a great department. Its a great community that is steadily growing. Until he leaves, the department will be mired in a sluggish pool of poor management feeding an already tanked morale. Hopefully no one is foolish enough to allow him to be on the board if he does get replaced.
Fort Lupton Fire is proof that the grass IS greener on the other side.
The fire chief was a vollie for a long time and career law enforcement. He was hired as the first career chief with no fire or EMS certs. He’d tell a horse he could lead it to water and take it to the glue factory instead.
If you wanna do office work in a polo from 0700-1700 everyday, be required to workout an hour every day (but not before 1700, not be aloud to touch the recliners or take a nap regardless of how many calls you ran the night before, and run a suicide crew because they refuse to pay overtime to staff their rigs, Fort Lupton Fire is the place for you!
We had a team to spec out a new engine. The chief went and bought what he wanted instead.
We wanted to change nozzles. The chief let people do research and build a presentation for months, and then told them he wasn’t changing anything before their meeting started.
We wanted to aggressively fight fires. The chief had no tactical clue what he was doing and burned down dozens of buildings.
We wanted to run with the departments around us, none of them would call us because it was such a mess (including the smaller agencies).
We wanted to get better at EMS. The chief wasn’t even an EMT and wouldn’t allow the department to get equipment that was well within it’s BLS scope.
We wanted our station officers to be aloud to run their stations and lead. Nope, they had to call the fire chief for everything.
Sad part is, the calls were amazing. It’s straight up ghetto firefighting. Lots of working fires…
The fire chief is the worst example of leadership I have ever witnessed and I’ve been on the job 17 years at this point. He literally fights against crews having firehouse culture. He wouldn’t even let people hang pictures on the wall in the stations. Heck, he wrote up his entire career staff of 20 people once.
The officers are okay but most of them are promoted because they kiss his ring, not based off of their leadership …actually a lot of them are terrible too. Blind leading the blind leading the common sense folks who quit. Just look at how much turn around the department has.
I’m incredibly thankful for the time I spent working at Fort Lupton because it changed my perspective. My worst day at my new department is exponentially better than my best day ever was at Fort Lupton. I remember the chief telling me not to leave because I would never get the opportunities at a bigger department that I could get at Fort Lupton …yeah so that was a lie
Man oh man where to start. Ill list the good things because its WAY shorter. The line guys are absolutely amazing. They care about and have passion for the job and id absolutely give my life for each and every one of them. The facilities and rigs were all new and well taken care of… and thats about it for the good.
The bad and the ugly; admin is without a doubt the worst admin ive ever seen or heard of (I have ~70 years of firefighting experience in my family and NONE of them have heard of worse) the penis potato (dictator) (chief. Keeping it in lowercase because he doesnt deserve the respect) in charge thinks hes not only gods gift to firefighting, but the world. He literally told me one time, word for word, “you see that *pointing to ‘chief’ on his name plate* that means my word is God’s word” which was the beginning of the end of my career here.
He really has no firefighting experience. He started as a volly, got volly chief at like 25 (red flag), and then got full time chief when they went that route because he went to high school with the board members (another red flag).
His disconnect with day to day life in the firehouse is so far gone you might as well try and get a wifi connection on Saturn. Weekend or holiday? Too bad you’re wearing class Bs until 5 (oh but admin is off or leaves at noon), got your ass handed to you the night before? Too bad up at 6:30 better be doing busy work by 7:30 or its a write up, wanna take a safety nap because of said ass kicking? Write up, TV on at lunch or before 5? Write up… you get the point. Dude hands out more write ups than pages on the hub. Oh and involved in all those write ups is his “disciplinary meeting” which includes him and his weasel lackey belittling you for about 2-3 hours, when really it could have been an email homie. But he makes sure his yes man is in there (usually under his desk) to hear it all so if you wanna go to a lawyer for hostile work environment, good luck. Its 2 on 1 at that point. You are ALWAYS guilty until proven innocent (spoiler alert: never happens)
He rules with an iron fist. You want vacation, Kelly day, or trade? He has to approve it. Sick time? Ope its gotta get signed off by him when you get back. All this because he absolutely REFUSES to hire OT and would rather the crews and the citizens be at a greater danger. And the best part is if youre on his bad side? Good luck getting any of that approved! But you ask him and he doesnt hold grudges, make it make sense. Wanna change a hose load (or anything for that matter) on the rigs? Gotta go through him, yet he hasnt pulled a hose in about 25 years. You know the more I write the more I realize if he had any more red flags id probably be dating him
Oof okay had a lot to get out there. The guys want to be aggressive and true firefighters but the department is so safety conscious that they just cant. “Safety first” no. Safety third, saving lives first no matter the risk. Thats the oath you swore to take and you will die by it if need be. “You should be cautious and knowledgeable, but not afraid. Fear does not save lives, it endangers it” the guys train their asses off though regardless and just work around all the rules.
Funny thing is my blood pressure dropped 20 points and my drinking problem stopped after leaving here (like actually not just telling my wife it did then sneaking garage beers when shes asleep)
All in all just know what youre getting into here. Use it to build the resume, and get out ASAP. Like someone said earlier the grass is absolutely greener on the other side. For the love of god dont let this be your one and only view of the fire service. Its the best job in the world and if youre not having fun doing it, something is wrong.
Man I hope this is actually anonymous or I just know el jefe (bi lingual lowercase #MultiTalanted) is gonna have the lawyer on the phone SO fast