A department born from disaster
On January 4, 1919, temperatures in Florissant fell to one degree below zero and never rose above seventeen. In the early morning hours, fire swept through Florissant's Loretto Academy, forcing fifty girls, ages five to fifteen, and seventy-five nuns out into the bitter cold. Florissant had no fire department, and the only alarm was the ringing of the church bell at St. Ferdinand.
Countless residents turned out to help fight the fire. Engines were sent from the City of St. Louis and University City, but they arrived too late to save the building. Offers to rebuild the academy were made, but the General Council of the Sisters of Loretto deemed it inadvisable, and the lack of fire protection in the village may have been one of the reasons.
Organizing a fire department
As a result of that disastrous fire, a group of concerned citizens met on March 8, 1919, and organized the Florissant Valley Volunteer Fire Department, which provided fire protection until the present district was established in 1950. Oscar Aydt was the first Fire Chief, and by October 1919, twenty-five volunteers had signed on as firefighters.
Following Mr. Aydt's resignation, Harry Nemnich became Fire Chief on May 12, 1925, and on April 1, 1963, he became the first full-time Fire Chief of the Florissant Valley Fire Protection District.
A fitting follow-up
There is a fitting follow-up to the fire that sparked our department in 1919. On May 24, 1966, the old St. Ferdinand Church, which sits on the same grounds as the Loretto Academy, caught fire. This time, District apparatus arrived in time. Although the church was heavily damaged, it was restored and still stands today.
Today, the Florissant Valley Fire Protection District operates three firehouses and an administration building, protecting roughly 72,000 residents around the clock. From a single volunteer company to a full career department, the mission has never changed: to be here when our neighbors need us.