Private Equity Finds a New Source of Profit: Volunteer Fire Departments

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/us/fire-department-software-private-equity.html

https://archive.ph/p7B8l

Private Equity Finds a New Source of Profit: Volunteer Fire Departments
Rural departments have long relied on cheap software solutions to keep their operations running. But fire chiefs report sharp price increases as investors have entered the market.
By Mike Baker
Dec. 14, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET

The Norfolk Volunteer Fire Department operates on an annual budget of $132,000, barely enough to sustain its aging rigs, train unpaid crews and keep the lights on at the station in the hills of northern Connecticut.

Not long ago, it faced a different kind of emergency: The software system it relied on to track detailed incident information was no longer going to be usable. A company backed by private equity investors, ESO Solutions, had acquired the platform and planned to shut it down. The alternative software it was offering would raise the community’s costs from $795 per year to more than $5,000.

Urgently looking for an alternative, the department found a cheaper system, but then ESO bought up the other brand. It left the department in a bind. “We don’t have a big tax base,” said Matthew Ludwig, an assistant fire chief in Norfolk. “We have to watch our pennies.”

Much of the software used by firefighters and other emergency responders was initially created by people who worked in those fields and felt a calling to keep prices affordable. But now fire chiefs around the country are scrambling to manage shrinking options and soaring costs as corporations flush with cash from Wall Street have raced to dominate the market.

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