News Release

Hilton Head Island Fire Rescue Awarded International Reaccreditation Status

April 4, 2022

Hilton Head Island Fire Rescue has received Reaccredited Agency status from the Commission on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI) for meeting the criteria established through the CFAI's voluntary self-assessment and accreditation program.

Hilton Head Island Fire Rescue is one of more than 300 agencies to achieve Internationally Accredited Agency status with the CFAI and the Center for Public Safety Excellence, Inc. (CPSE). Fire Rescue has completed this process five times in the last 20 years, with their first accredited agency status being awarded in 2002.

"We have a dynamic team of firefighters, emergency medical technicians, 911 communicators and other staff members who work very hard at protecting and serving our community. They are dedicated to achieving and maintaining best practices to meet industry standards, and in many instances, perform well above those standards. Reaccreditation reflects the department’s commitment to constantly measure our performance and establish improvement goals that will enhance our service to the community," said Fire Chief Brad Tadlock.

CFAI is dedicated to assisting the fire and emergency service agencies throughout the world in achieving excellence through self-assessment and accreditation to provide continuous quality improvement and the enhancement of service delivery to their communities. The CFAI process is voluntary and provides an agency with an improvement model to assess their service delivery and performance internally and then works with a team of peers from other agencies to evaluate their completed self-assessment.

The agency's achievement of Accredited Agency status demonstrates the commitment of the agency to provide the highest quality of service to their community. Fire Rescue has been able to use the Commission on Fire Accreditation International's process as a proactive mechanism to plan for the future of this agency and locate areas where we can improve on the quality of the services we provided.