Department Profile
The Newport Township Fire District is located in the Northeastern corner of Illinois in Lake County on the Wisconsin border. Newport serves portions of Old Mill Creek, Wadsworth, Beach Park, and Unincorporated Lake County.
Population served is over 7500 residents.
District Statistics
40% Residential
35% Farmland
19% L.C. Forest Preserve
< 2% Commercial/Industrial
Newport’s Station located on Caroline Ave in Wadsworth is staffed 24 hours a day with 4 members, supplimented with a scheduled rotation of on-call staff ready to respond from home.
Newport Township Fire District responds to a wide variety of emergency incidents, over 950 annually. This includes various types of fires, vehicle accidents and medical emergencies. With Interstate 94 running through our district, Newport faces regular responses to highway emergencies often including semi trucks and high speed collisions.
Helping Each Other
Newport participates with other emergency service agencies in mutual aid agreements. These types of agreements are common throughout the United States. All emergency service providers recognize that an incident can quickly become too large for the local agency. For this reason, emergency service agencies enter into mutual aid agreements to help each other when situations dictate the need. Newport is a member of the Lake and McHenry County Specialized Rescue Teams (SRT), which has members trained above and beyond basic firefighting requirements so that they have specific skills in things such as Dive Rescue, Building Collapse, Confined Space, Wildland Firefighting, Hazardous Materials, etc.
Community Education
The Fire District reaches out to the community several times a year so that we may promote fire safety awareness. We make regular visits to adult retirement centers and the local schools including Newport, Millburn and St. Patrick's to teach topics such as: Stop, Drop and Roll, crawl low in smoke, basic home escape plan and calling 911.
There is an annual “Santa Run” in which fire trucks stocked with firefighters, Santa Claus and candy visit local neighborhoods to spread safety awareness and holiday cheer. Neighbors can also visit the firehouse at the annual Open House in which there are many games and activities set up for the children, station tours, truck demonstrations and more.
