For over 100 years, the San Diego Fire Relief Association has been providing for the protection, care, and relief of the members of the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department. In 1990, the association founded the Benevolent Fund to provide a channel for public support as needs continued to increase.
Upon it’s founding, this new 501(c)(3) charity was called “The Widows, Orphans, and Distressed Firefighters Fund” in an attempt to reflect the mission and purpose for which the fund was created. A few years later, the name was shortened again to “The San Diego Firefighters Benevolent Fund”, and finally to what we are known as today, FirefighterAid.
FirefighterAid is a 501(c)(3) fund managed by San Diego Fire Relief Association. Our mission is to provide charitable assistance to San Diego County Firefighters and their families in times of need and to promote awareness of Firefighter health and safety issues and the impacts they have upon their families and communities.
FirefighterAid is supported entirely by donations from SDFRA members and the general public. We need the support of our community to continue caring for Firefighters and their families through sickness, distress, and death. We’ve been working hard on our mission every day since to serve our Firefighters, and that’s our story.
In the early days of the City of San Diego, Firefighters did not receive benefits and the job was extraordinarily hazardous. Firefighters were often harmed or killed during the execution of their duties.
The poor and working class families from which Firefighters hailed rarely possessed the means to pay burial costs and funerary expenses for their loved ones killed in the line of duty.
In 1907, a group of Firefighters bonded together to remedy this problem and the San Diego Fireman’s Relief Association was born, which is now called the San Diego Fire Relief Association.
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