Arab Alabama Fire Department

Arab Alabama? That's ironic =)

Now, this whole thing is way too complicated, with all these horrible emboss effect and awful drpo shadows. get rid of them altogether/

There are also way too many elements : simplify.

Yeah, there is just too much information and as Putz said, the effects gotta go. Nostalgia is great, the fact that you combined so many elements into such a small space is great, but is it necessary? If this were on the side of a vehicle traveling down the street no one would be able to interpret everything at a glance. Simplify is the answer.

It is too crowded. The emblem in the middle is small, gets lost. The yellow text on red is unreadable and all you could think of to help this was the emboss effect which did not help. Too much info, too many colors, too many items, too many effects, too many fonts, too cheap. And in top of that it feels like some old communist crest.

Lose the dropshadow on EVERYTHING (seriously- all of them have to go go go!), make your font smaller so it fits better, simplify what you have in the middle (right now it's just a pile of clip art and it's cluttered/confusing), and I don't think you need the Alabama banner either (which also has a drop shadow!)- I don't see why the state can't just be on the bottom of the circle like city is at the top.

The one part that I do like how you replaced the top chunk of red stuff with the flag, that's not bad. (Might be a bitch to print, but I think it's a nice idea.)

Sorry being an ass now, but:
In my oppinion, this has nothing to do with a logo.

I wouldn't even start to change something about it, I'd start a whole new idea.