Shrewsbury's all-volunteer department answers crashes, alarms, chimney and brush fires, trail rescues and mutual aid calls. Membership is stable but ageing, and the Cuttingsville station, built about seventy years ago, is too small for most modern trucks.
1952
The Shrewsbury Volunteer Fire Department is founded.
2023
20 calls in town and 4 on mutual aid. During July's flooding the Cuttingsville station opens as a temporary shelter and members check on homes. New defibrillators and thermal imaging cameras arrive.
24 calls that year
2024
Crashes lead with 16. A night search for a missing hunter off Gaynor Road ends well, and extrication tools practised one evening free a trapped operator the next day. Members begin looking at options for the station with NBF Architects.
45 calls that year
2025
Three structure fires, eleven alarm responses and nine crashes. In October Rescue 1 arrives: a 4x4 Ford F-550 mini pumper built by Fouts Fire, small enough for the station, bought for $415,309 from the town's equipment reserve.
46 calls that year
Calls
Calls nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024 and held there in 2025.
Emergency calls, by year
242023
452024
462025
Calendar years, from the department's report in each town report.
Calls by type, 2025
Alarm responses11
Vehicle crashes9
Downed trees and lines5
Structure fires3
Chimney fires3
Vehicle fires3
Brush fires3
Smoke investigations3
Other fires2
Injured hikers2
Medical assists2
Calendar 2025; the types add up to the 46 calls reported.
Shrewsbury in Rutland County. Every fire station in the county is marked —
2 here, 36 in neighbouring towns, which is
who turns out on a mutual aid call.
Boundaries and water from VCGI; fire district lines are not town lines, and
village districts and contracted coverage cross them. A town line runs out into
the lake, so the shoreline here is the water drawn over the boundary, not the
boundary itself.
Money
The town gives $35,000 a year; donations, break-open tickets and endowments do the rest. Spending jumped in 2025 with new equipment, part of it drawn from the department's replacement fund.
Calendar 2025, actual
New equipment
$54,763
Communications
$7,945
Fundraising
$4,497
Stations
$3,282
Maintenance
$3,117
Operating
$3,114
The six largest lines in the department's 2025 operating statement; total spending was $84,356.
Operating spending, by year
2025
$84,356
2024
$50,691
Rescue 1 ($415,309) was paid from the town's separate equipment reserve, not from these accounts.
In an emergency dial 911. These are business lines.
Burning
Vermont requires a Permit to Kindle Fire from the town’s Forest Fire Warden for anything larger than a campfire — except where snow covers the ground at the burn site, or the fire is at least 200 feet from anything that will carry flame. Wardens can suspend burning outright when fire danger is high. Who to ask locally is recorded department by department; where it is blank below, the fire department itself is the place to start.
For residents
Burn permitsCall one of the town's fire wardens, listed on the town's fire department page.
JoinThe department welcomes new members; volunteers meet most Thursday evenings.
Read in October 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.
Not recorded yet
Nothing is written up here for joining, burn permits.
Not because it does not exist — because nobody has typed it in. If you know this
department, tell us and it goes on the record with its
source named.