The Minneapolis Fire Department is one of the sponsoring agencies of Minnesota Task Force 1 (MN-TF1) an urban search and rescue team based in Minneapolis–Saint Paul metro area.

The task force is made up of firefighters, police officers and paramedics with specialties including heavy rescue, HazMat, medical and structure engineers.

[5] On Thanksgiving night November 25, 1982, fire destroyed an entire block of Downtown Minneapolis the 16-story headquarters of Northwestern National Bank (now Wells Fargo) and the vacant, partially demolished location formerly occupied by Donaldson's department store, which had recently moved across the street to the new City Center mall.

Across the metropolitan region, the FBI and ATF investigated 164 structure fires from arson that occurred May 27–30, 2020, during the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis–Saint Paul.

Arson fires also damaged a variety of buildings containing schools, non-profit organizations, government services, and private residences.