American fire death statistics are among the highest in the industrial world, and this is unacceptable. The problem is that the fire service's historical emphasis on suppression alone has proven to be inadequate, and a higher priority should be put on the fire prevention and public education programs. The purpose of this descriptive paper was to evaluate the priority of the fire prevention and public education programs in the overall hierarchy of priorities of the American fire service. The questions researched were: 1. Historically, what has been the major priority of the American fire service? 2. Where do the fire prevention and public education programs fit within the overall hierarchy of current priorities of the metropolitan fire departments? 3.What has been the priority of the Las Vegas Fire and Rescue (LVF&R) during the 90's? The procedures applied were: researching the historical documents to identify the national trend; conduct a survey of the major metropolitan fire departments to identify their priorities based on the 1998 statistics; and conduct an analysis of the LVF&R's records during the 90's to identify the priorities. The results indicated that, historically, suppression has been the major priority for the American fire service. Based on the 1998 statistics, the fire prevention and public education programs are still not a high priority for the major metropolitan fire departments, and during the 90's fire prevention has not been a high priority for the LVF&R. The fire problem is a national problem, thus the recommendation should focus on a national solution to comprehensively address the problem.In 1947, the American fire service developed national recommendations to address the problem, but neither the resources nor the mechanisms to implement them at the local level have been available. A federal grant program to mandate local emphasis on the fire prevention and public education programs should be established to provide them with both the resources and the structured organizational mechanisms to be able to materialize those recommendations. The recommendations for the LVF&R were merely cultural modifications that did not require additional resources for implementation. The recommendations included: providing fire prevention training for all firefighters, mandating extensive fire prevention training as a promotional requirement for the officers; focusing on career development programs; and providing promotional opportunities for the fire prevention personnel.