Bill White, Mayor of Houston in 2006, said during that year that Kingwood had "a great fire and EMS service with one of our best captains in the Kingwood area, and I have not gotten any complaints about fire and EMS response times, which is one of the best in the nation." In 2006 Mike Fuhre, the former chief of the Kingwood VFD, criticized HFD for allocating fewer staff and pieces of equipment to Kingwood than had existed during the existence of the VFD. Fuhre said that there were occasions when Kingwood had no coverage because all of the firefighters were called to other locations, and still do.