Community Risk Reduction/Prevention

Our Risk Reduction and Prevention Divisions exist to preemptively reduce injury and property loss for the communities we serve.

Risk Reduction Efforts

Most of the fires we respond to are the result of human behavior. For this reason, we aim our prevention and education efforts at our most common hazards and our most appropriate populations. From school programs to smoke alarm giveaways, we strive to educate and equip our communities for safety.

Education

In 2025 we held 4 Fire Safety Open Houses across our service areas, and shared safety information at a variety of City sponsored events. We made over 110 safety education visits to schools, living facilities, and neighborhood gatherings. In addition, we conducted over 30 fire station tours, including 7 programs for people with special needs or developmental disabilities.

Also this year, we implemented our new fourth-grade, structured learning program that reached over 600 students across the City. This program is the result of research pointing to 4th grade as the optimal time to teach kids fire safety. This new, targeted approach helps our educator visit more schools and will hopefully increase the effectiveness of our school programs.

Check out our Fire Safety Open House 2025 video

Equipping Those In Need

In 2025, we installed and or provided:

150+ smoke alarms

19 rangehood fire extinguishers

14 deaf alarms

In addition, we provided hundreds of 9V batteries for use in smoke alarms. We also began offering carbon monoxide alarms to those in need.

Fire Safety Community Event Merriam, KS

Community Risk Reduction Dashboard

We use a dynamic, digital dashboard to map the alarms and extinguishers we distribute. With demographic information overlays, we can better identify areas in need of greater protection measures. This helps us to focus our education and risk reduction efforts.

It's just one of the innovative ways we're working to better understand the changing needs in our communities, adapt to those needs and devise strategies to help reduce risk for those we serve.

Home Escape Planning

Do you have a home fire escape plan? Preparing ahead of an emergency is the best way to ensure your family will know what to do in the event of a fire. Download our Home Escape Planning page to make your family's plan today!

Prevention Division

OPFD's Prevention Division ensures fire code compliance, investigates origin and cause of fires and promotes public safety education.

Inspections

Our fire inspectors encourage businesses along the path to compliance. In 2025 our team conducted 5,663 inspections and issued 6,047 citations. We can't know the number of fires prevented by these efforts, but we can tell you that we experienced O fire fatalities in our service areas during 2025! Additionally, Overland Park's commercial fire loss for 2025 totaled $765,935. (For reference, the total assessed valuation of the property we protect in Overland Park is almost 5 billion dollars.)

Investigations

Our fire investigators work to determine the origin and cause of every fire. Additionally, we partner with specially trained Overland Park Police detectives to find and convict persons involved in the crime of arson. We investigated 118 fires in 2025 and determined 19 were intentionally set. We also work with the Johnson County District Attorney's Office to obtain convictions for persons involved in the crime of arson.

Leading Causes of Fire

Here are the top 3 causes of fire in Overland Park for 2025:

Unattended Cooking: 49
Careless Discard Of Smoking Material: 15
Electrical: 12

New Investigative Tool

In 2025, a recently implemented investigation tool paid off. While working an arson case in 2024, our fire investigators developed a relationship with the Kansas City Metropolitan Crime Commission that enabled our first use of the TIPS Hotline. Information obtained from this tool helped investigators successfully solve an arson case involving a commercial property in Overland Park. "This case would not have been solved without the information we received from the hotline," said Assistant Fire Marshal Travis Coates. It's just one more tool to help our investigators solve these dangerous and destructive crimes.

We're Effective

One way we can evaluate our fire suppression effectiveness is to examine how much property we are able to save when extinguishing a fire. We make these calculations by estimating the value of the property and contents involved in a fire and then subtracting the fire damage estimate. We then determine the percentage of property saved by our efforts. Here's the 2025 breakdown for the areas we serve.

Overland Park Fires

Residential: Estimated property/contents value involved: $454,068,838

Estimated property/contents dollar loss from fire: $7,357,911

Percentage of property/contents saved: 98.38%

*This number represents 0.20% of the assessed residential property valuation.

Commercial: Estimated property/contents value involved: $114,365,853

Estimated property/contents dollar loss from fire: $765,935

Percentage of property/contents saved: 99.34%

*This number represents 0.04% of the assessed commercial property valuation.

Merriam Fires

Residential: Estimated property/contents value involved: $5,368,159

Estimated property/contents dollar loss from fire: $139,960

Percentage of property/contents saved: 97.4%

*This number represents 0.096% of the assessed residential property value in Merriam.

Commercial: Estimated property/contents value involved: $46,734,000

Estimated property/contents dollar loss from fire: $0

Percentage of property/contents saved: 100%

*This number was generated by one commercial fire call at a large strip mall, resulting in no damage.

Southeastern Johnson County Fires

Residential: Estimated property/contents value involved: $2,901,000

Estimated property/contents dollar loss from fire: $251,000

Percentage of property/contents saved: 91.35%

*This number represents 0.114% of the total assessed property value in JoCo Coverage area.

Commercial: Estimated property/contents value involved: $0

Estimated property/contents dollar loss from fire: $0

Percentage of property/contents saved: N/A

Prevention Partnership

In 2025 we were approached by the Johnson County Fire Marshals in conjunction with the Kansas State Fire Marshal's Office to help produce a public service announcement video. The video is part of a state-wide campaign to raise awareness about a new, inexpensive device for home oxygen users that can save lives. Our Fire Marshal and Media Services Division collaborated with several neighboring departments to create this video about Home Oxygen Thermal Fuses.

We're always looking for amazing people to join our team and help serve our mission. If you want to know more about employment opportunities with the Overland Park Fire Department, visit us at JoinOPFD .