Central Oktibbeha Fire Department
The World's First Volunteer Fire Department Web Site
NOTE FROM THE WEBMASTER:
Our web site is certainly not the largest, prettiest or most well developed fire service site, but we believe it was the first for a volunteer fire department.
In July of 1994 I created the first version of the Central Oktibbeha F.D. web site on a server I set up primarily for the public relations office of Mississippi State University. (I have been the manager of the Internet-based campus-wide information service for MSU since 1989, using a couple of other technologies prior to the introduction of the World Wide Web.
At that time the Web was still an experimental service and there were only a few thousand web sites in the world. There were no search engines, yet, but the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, known as CERN, kept a list of all known web servers. Shortly after establishing the Central Oktibbeha site, I checked the CERN list for fire department sites. Although I did not find any sites devoted to the fire service, I did find a municipal government site for a city in California. If I recall correctly, it was San Jose. It included a page about their career fire department. I believe that could claim to be the first fire service web site.
The original URL for our site, http://msuinfo.ur.msstate.edu/~b_george/covfd/covfd.htm is still in use. This site (http://www.fire.oktibbeha.ms.us/central/) is the direct decendant and a Central Oktibbeha F.D. web site has been online continuously since July 1994.
Some fairly early mentions of our site in the media include: an article in the Starkville (Miss.) Daily News (Feb. 25, 1996) and a comment in Firehouse about the same time.
While I believe the Central Oktibbeha F.D. web site was the first site for a volunteer fire department and may have been the first for the fire service, I will gladly withdraw that claim if anyone can provide evidence to the contrary.