The first fire company in Alexandria was the Friendship Fire Company, founded in 1774.
George Washington is reported to have been a part of it, but no records remain to prove that, however he did purchase a fire engine for the company in 1775. The first paid firefighters were hired in 1855 and the Alexandria Fire Department was established in 1866. Before that the City of Alexandria was served by multiple volunteer departments. By the end of the Civil War, many of the volunteer companies were under staffed so, in 1866, the City Council passed an act to combine the remaining fire companies into the Alexandria Fire Department. In 1977, the department announced they were no longer hiring firefighters who smoked and anyone hired "signed a contract that included a provision against smoking", as part of a larger push for stricter health requirements. Alexandria was among the first departments in the country to have similar requirements. Volunteer firefighters, as opposed to volunteers who work in stations and other roles, effectively ended in 1981 when the City passed new regulations requiring all firefighters to meet the stricter standards applied to career firefighters. Former volunteers continued to protest that decision through the mid-1980s, often invoking George Washington's name who they regard as taking part in the first volunteer fire company in Alexandria. Along with other departments, units from AFD responded to the
September 11 attacks at
The Pentagon and the
Congressional baseball shooting in 2017, which took place in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria. In early 2021, Alexandria became the first locality in Virginia to authorize public unions to
collectively bargain, after Virginia allowed localities to do so for the first time on May 1, 2021, after the Supreme Court of Virginia banned the practice in 1977. The union representing Alexandria firefighters,
IAFF Local 2141, became the first that voted to collectively bargain. == Operations ==