When the Benoni municipality built the first fire station, on the corner of Tom Jones Street and Cranbourne Avenue, in 1912, alongside the old municipal offices, it.

Equipment would only be delivered later that year, too late to help extinguish a fire in the central business area of Market Avenue, now Prince’s Avenue, which gutted several premises.

This fire was finally controlled by firemen from the Boksburg and Johannesburg fire brigades.

The Johannesburg fire engine took 80 minutes to arrive, a good time considering the state of the roads at that time.

Benoni was manned by the brigade foreman and later first fire chief, Richard Jeffery Herd.

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Brigade members were mostly volunteers from the municipal staff, including town engineer DP Howells as captain, and town clerk JB Whitehouse as vice-captain.

Herd led the brigade during two of the most tumultuous and violent periods in Benoni’s and SA’s history – the miners’ strikes of 1913 and 1922.

A horse-drawn ambulance was soon added to the brigade’s responsibilities and became especially useful during the 1918 flu epidemic.

In 1927, the Benoni Fire Brigade commissioned its first Dennis Guilford 250-gallon (943l) fire engine from London.

It had an electric self-starter and foam extinguishers, believed to be unique in SA, an eight-day clock plus speedometer, an eight-inch Bill & Horn (large, loud warning signal) and a 9m telescopic ladder. It is now preserved in a UK museum.

In the late 1920’s, a new fire station was built on the corner of Liverpool Road and Harpur Avenue. It was substantially enlarged in 1978.

Dave ‘Cocky’ Fingleson, a cockney of the Jewish faith who served as a fireman since 1939, was promoted to chief fire officer in Benoni in 1961. On his retirement in 1975, Ted Barber, the chief of the Nigel Fire Department, took over from him.

In 1986, a new fire station was built on Pretoria Road, Rynfield, and named after Barber.

Another station was built on Sapphire Street, Farrarmere, in 1989. This ensured a quick response time to Farrarmere, Alphen Park, parts of Northmead and Lakefield Ext 21.

In those days, Barber said there were no direct roads linking Benoni from the east to the west (i.e. Rynfield to Farrarmere), which necessitated the new station, as response times from the Central Fire Station on Harpur Avenue or the Ted Barber Fire Station in Rynfield were as much as 11 minutes.

With three fire stations manned 24/7, emergency personnel could reach almost all corners of Benoni within five minutes.

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(Sources: Golden Jubilee Supplement 24 September 1971/retyped: Glynis Cox Millett-Clay: April 2017/Updated 9 December 2025).