Melbourne Public Safety Guide

In Melbourne, 9-1-1 reaches the city's own police and fire departments, while Brevard County Emergency Management leads countywide disaster planning and response, posts storm shelter locations and sends AlertBrevard alerts.

Police headquarters for Melbourne is the Joseph Pellicano Law Enforcement Center on W. NASA Boulevard (number 250), and the non-emergency police line is 321-608-6731 (Melbourne Police Department). The Melbourne Fire Department shares that non-emergency number through option 1, and its administration office answers at 321-608-6000 (Melbourne Fire Department). Brevard County Emergency Management, led by Director John Scott, works from 1751 Huntington Lane in Rockledge and answers at 321-637-6670 (Brevard County Emergency Management).

Last verified: October 14, 2026, on the City of Melbourne police, fire and hurricane preparation pages.

The Melbourne Fire Department has held an ISO Class 1 rating, the highest available, since November 1, 2022, and it was the first department in Brevard County to earn it.

The city says the rating puts Melbourne among the top 1% of fire departments nationally, that insurers use these ratings to help set fire insurance premiums, and that premiums are generally lower where protection is better (Melbourne Fire Department). Every Melbourne station is licensed in advanced life support and staffed by paramedics. When local units are tied up, the department draws on the Brevard County Mutual Aid program and the Statewide Emergency Response agreement.

Station placement drives the rating. The Station 72 project page explains that a department's core operations, including where stations sit, staffing and the age of trucks and equipment, make up more than half of an ISO score, and it reports that in 2025 the Melbourne Fire Department responded to 3,059 calls for service with an average response time of 4 minutes and 28 seconds (Fire Station 72 Replacement Project).

Melbourne is replacing Fire Station 72, a 1966 building at Jimmy Moore Park on Wickham Road and Sarno Road, and in July 2026 City Council approved buying a new site for it.

The station was built to house three fire personnel, measures about 3,200 square feet and covers a response area of about 10.62 square miles, most of its calls coming from east of Wickham Road (City of Melbourne Station 72 page). On June 13, 2023 City Council hired PGAL, Inc. to analyze needs and design prototypes for replacing Stations 72, 73, 75 and 76, which the city calls functionally obsolete.

Finding a site took several rounds. The Planning and Zoning Board approved a land use change for about 2.67 acres of Jimmy Moore Park on June 6, 2025, but City Council denied it 6 to 1 on July 8, 2025. On October 14, 2025 staff brought five candidate sites, and Council asked for work on a privately owned parcel on Sarno Road west of Wickham Road and on the park site. After an April 20, 2026 community meeting, Council approved the purchase at its July 14, 2026 meeting, and the city is now under contract for the property, with a task order covering design, geotechnical and wetland work ahead of bidding.

The new Melbourne station is planned for two apparatus and up to nine fire personnel. A Heavy Rescue unit staffed in anticipation of the move is operating temporarily out of Station 76 for now.

Melbourne residents east of the Indian River Lagoon live on the barrier island and fall in the mandatory evacuation zone, and the city warns people in mobile or manufactured homes anywhere in the city never to ride out a hurricane there.

The city's Hurricane Preparation page says a portion of the City of Melbourne lies on the barrier island, in a barrier island list that also names Satellite Beach, Indian Harbour Beach, Indialantic, Melbourne Beach, Merritt Island, Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach, and it warns never to ride out a hurricane in a mobile or manufactured home even outside an evacuation zone (City of Melbourne Hurricane Preparation). Hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30. Causeways are not closed before a storm, but driving them becomes unsafe in tropical-storm-force winds, typically 45 miles per hour sustained, so crossing from the Melbourne beachside to the mainland has to happen before the wind arrives.

Mainland Melbourne addresses can still sit in a zone. The state evacuation zone lookup takes a typed address and shows whether it falls in one of the colored evacuation zones, which the state notes are flood zones (Florida Division of Emergency Management). Shelter locations and opening times change with each storm and are posted by Brevard County Emergency Management.

Brevard County opens three kinds of shelter for Melbourne evacuees: general population, pet-friendly and special needs. The special needs shelters require registration in advance, because each client is assigned a space so that there are enough supplies and medical professionals to help assist caregivers; the city points residents who rely on powered equipment or a caregiver, and who have no other safe option, to the county registration page. Along the coast the city names storm surge as often the greatest threat to life and property in a hurricane, and it singles out barrier island communities as particularly at risk of dangerous surge flooding.

One detail on the city page is out of date: it still lists Patrick Air Force Base among the barrier island areas, while the installation's own site has used the name Patrick Space Force Base (Patrick Space Force Base). The Melbourne hurricane evacuation zones guide covers zones, shelters and transportation help in more depth.

Melbourne sends emergency alerts through AlertBrevard, the same system Brevard County Emergency Management uses, and residents sign up online or by phone through the city.

The city switched from CodeRED to AlertBrevard and could not carry old CodeRED subscribers over, so anyone who signed up under the old system has to register again (City of Melbourne Emergency Notifications). City of Melbourne water customers are added automatically, but only the contact tied to the utility account, which leaves out other household members and a landlord when the account is in a renter's name. Residents who cannot register online can call the city ECO Division at 321-608-5080.

Brevard County uses AlertBrevard for boil-water notices, shelter-in-place and evacuation orders, wildfire news and weather watches and warnings, based on the address entered (Brevard County Emergency Management). For a Melbourne household, an address-based AlertBrevard entry is how a boil-water notice for its own street or an evacuation order for the beachside arrives.

The City of Melbourne and Brevard County typically hand out sandbags when a hurricane is forecast to affect the area, and flood risk is checked on FEMA maps that are being redrawn for Brevard County.

The city advises checking an address on the Brevard County flood zone map to see whether a home is in a flood zone, notes that not every home needs them, and suggests keeping empty bags in a hurricane kit to fill with sand or dirt from the property (City of Melbourne Hurricane Preparation). It also asks residents never to stack yard debris on a stormwater inlet, which can clog it and flood the street.

FEMA lists the City of Melbourne, community 120025, in the National Flood Insurance Program at Community Rating System class 7 since April 1, 2026, which brings a 15 percent flood insurance discount inside the special flood hazard area and 5 percent outside it; the currently effective map is dated 01/29/21 (FEMA NFIP Community Status Book). FEMA has also issued a preliminary Flood Insurance Rate Map for Brevard County and incorporated areas, opening a 90-day appeal period before the new lines take effect (City of Melbourne Flood Hazard Information).

The Melbourne sandbags and storm debris guide covers past distribution sites and debris rules, and the Melbourne flood risk zones guide explains zone letters and stormwater rules.