Jon O’Brien

Deputy Fire Chief Jon O’Brien has worked as a fire service professional for over 26 years. He started his career as a volunteer firefighter with the City of Sierra Madre. After graduating from high school, he completed paramedic training at the Los Angeles County Paramedic Training Institute and was hired by the City of Monrovia as a full-time firefighter/paramedic until he joined the County of Los Angeles in 1999.

Chief O’Brien has served in several operational and administrative assignments, promoting through the ranks to his current position as a Deputy Fire Chief. Along the way, he has worked as a flight medic in the Department’s Air Operations Section, a fire crew supervisor in the Camps Section, a recruit training captain, and a field battalion chief.

In April 2014, Chief O’Brien was assigned to the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Bureau and was responsible for the education and training of the Department’s 3,200 emergency medical technicians and 1,250 paramedics. The following year in November 2015, Chief O’Brien was promoted again to Assistant Fire Chief and assigned to Division VI in the Central Region. In July 2017, he returned as the Acting Deputy Fire Chief to the EMS Bureau and later officially promoted to Deputy Fire Chief in December 2017.

Chief O’Brien was assigned as the deputy fire chief of the North Regional Operations Bureau in April 2020. He oversees the cities of Palmdale, Lancaster, Santa Clarita, and La Cañada Flintridge as well as the Technical Operations Unit and Air & Wildland Division of the Department. He is the incident commander of the Department’s Incident Management Team 1.

Chief O’Brien received his Associate of Arts degree in fire science at Mount San Antonio Community College and his Bachelor of Science degree in public policy and management at the University of Southern California. He currently represents the Department on the FIRESCOPE Taskforce and the Los Angeles County Measure B Advisory Committee.