In March 2025, social media users shared a rumor that firefighters were shot off their ladders as they tried to put out blazes after U.S. President Donald Trump mentioned such instances in a speech.
While addressing the Justice Department on March 14, Trump praised law enforcement and said:
That includes our fire departments, too. They don't get spoken about enough, you know. They go into some of the areas, I read, where they're shooting them off ladders. Can you believe it? They go up to put out a fire […] and they go and they shoot them off a ladder. It's just unbelievable.
The Daily Mail posted a clip of Trump making the comment, which spread across X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and was then picked up by users on Threads and Bluesky (archived, archived, archived, archived, archived, archived).
It is true that there are multiple examples of reputable news outlets reporting on firefighters having been shot at while responding to an emergency call. However, we could find no evidence that attackers were "shooting them off ladders," as Trump asserted. It is not clear whether Trump was referring to a specific incident, and we have contacted the White House for clarification and will update this story if we get a response.
For example, in 2012, CNN reported that a man ambushed firefighters in New York, killing two and seriously injuring two others. The Dallas Morning News reported a man shot a firefighter responding to a call in 2017, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report in 2021 detailing the shooting of a Wisconsin firefighter by a revived overdose patient. Alabama-based AL.com reported in 2023 that a gunman shot two firefighters at a station in Birmingham, killing one and injuring one. WBTS-TV in Boston reported that same year that a man shot at firefighters as they arrived to tackle a building fire, but nobody was hurt. In 2024, British newspaper The Guardian reported that a firefighter and two police officers were fatally shot in Minneapolis while responding to a call.
None of these reports mention the firefighters being attacked while on a ladder putting out a fire.
The U.S. Fire Administration also keeps a log of firefighter fatalities across the country, organized by year. This data, however, does not account for those who were not fatally injured. At the time of writing, it did not specify that any firefighters had died in a shooting in 2025, although two causes of death have yet to be determined.
Snopes has previously reported on claims about firefighters, including rumors that South African firefighters went to Los Angeles to help fight the January 2025 wildfires and that half of LA's fire trucks are electric and have to go back to the fire house to recharge every eight to 10 hours.