Raúl Gándara Cartagena (1910–1989) was fire chief in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and the first and longest-serving Commonwealth of Puerto Rico fire chief.
Gándara Cartagena was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, on 26 March 1910.
In 1942, the Puerto Rico Legislature created the Servicio de Bomberos de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico Fire Service), and the governor of the island at the time, Rexford Guy Towell, selected Raúl Gándara—who at the moment was Captain of the Ponce Fire Corps—to become Puerto Rico's first state fire chief.
[6] By 2011 this promise had either not materialized or fell into disgrace [7] and on 15 May 2012, the city once again re-initiated its own municipal fire corps.
[8] In 1951, Gandara wrote "Cuerpo de bomberos: Manual del bombero" (Firefighters Corps: A Firefighter's Handbook), a book on the firemen's service, which became a firemen's manual in several Latin American countries.