The Snoqualmie Fire Department received accredited agency status with the Commission on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI) for meeting the criteria established through the CFAI’s voluntary self-assessment accreditation program.

Snoqualmie joins the ranks of only 266 agencies to achieve Internationally Accredited Agency status out of the more than 30,000 fire agencies internationally. It is in the top 1 percent of fire agencies to meet all specific accreditation criteria.

“It cannot be overstated, this is a very impressive achievement by the men and women of our fire department,” Mayor Matt Larson said. “It will serve to further improve public confidence in the quality and professionalism of the fire department’s work in our community.”

There are only five accredited agencies in Washington. Of those, Snoqualmie Fire is the first agency with combined volunteer and career firefighters — the other agencies are all career.

“One of our organization’s core values is to gain public trust by providing exceptional levels of service to those we serve,” said Fire Chief Mark Correira. “This value has been validated by the Center for Public Safety Excellence and we are extremely proud of this accomplishment. It was a department-wide effort with support from city administration and city council. We could not have been this successful without all of these groups involved.”

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 enhancement of service delivery to their communities. The program is voluntary and provides an agency with an improvement model to assess its service delivery and performance internally, and then works with a team of peers from other agencies to evaluate its completed self-assessment.

“It is with great honor that the Commission on Fire Accreditation International has awarded your agency with accredited status,” said Chief Steve Dongworth, Chairman of the CFAI. “As an internationally-accredited agency, you help lead the fire and emergency services to higher and greater standards for their communities. Thank you for your bravery and transparency to invite peers into your organization to verify and validate the work you accomplished.”