Fire Department Responses

Firefighters Respond to Record Number of Calls

Fridley's firefighters responded to 2943 calls for service in 2008. This number compares with 2,804 calls for service in 2007, and 2568 calls in 2006. The chart below portrays these as well as forecast calls for 2008 through 2011. The projections assume a 5% per year increase in medical assist calls and fire calls at a constant 2007 rate.

More than two-thirds of the calls for service are rescue or medical assist calls. Of the 1,963 rescue or medical assist calls many are for illnesses, difficulty breathing, injury, diabetic reaction, psychiatric reasons, cardiac arrest, seizure, injuries suffered in motor vehicle accidents, and a host of other causes. The number of these calls has also steadily increased by more than 25% since 2003.

While the number of medical assist calls by our Fridley firefighters is growing steadily, the number of fire calls has been inconsistent from year to year. In 2007, there were 123 fire calls. This compares to 145 fire calls in 2006, 199 fire calls in 2005, and 171 fire calls in 2004. The number for 2007 includes 35 structural fires. This compares with 32 structural fires in 2006, 39 structural fires in 2005, and 51 structural fires in 2004.

Other Fire Department responses in 2007 included 135 hazardous conditions calls involving things such as downed power lines, gasoline spills, gas leaks, shorting electrical equipment, and hazardous materials releases. Their calls also included service calls, such as those for ring removal, smoke investigation, flooding, and recreational fires.

Yet another category of Fire Department calls is the false alarm. Each year firefighters roll out of the City's fire stations to address calls that are triggered by broken sprinkler systems and malfunctioning fire alarm systems. In 2007, this happened 286 times. Additionally, fire fighters responded to another 285 good intent calls in which a problem perceived by a citizen caller turned out to be something other than a fire.

Response times to all of these fire calls have been ranging between six and seven minutes in each of the last four years. Response times for medic assist calls have averaged about five minutes over the same time span. As we get more concurrent medical assist calls, however, this impacts the firefighters' fire call response times. Firefighter response times are also impacted considerably by the times it takes paid-on-call firefighters to respond from home as well as by weather, traffic, poor directional information for vehicle accidents, and the growing number of routine service calls and false alarm calls.

In order to help improve response times, the Fire Department hired five additional paid-on-call fire fighters in 2007. Fire Chief John Berg has also created additional paid-on-call firefighter shifts on weekdays and Friday nights. In theory this enables the Fire Department to respond with a fire engine staffed by at least three firefighters or a rescue unit with two firefighters and a third person standing by. While this represents minimum staffing for both types of calls, it does allow a truck or rescue unit to leave the station without waiting for paid-on-call firefighters to respond from their homes. Ideally, a structural fire response requires an estimated twenty-two firefighters. With current staffing, Fridley typically has only eleven to twelve firefighters available on weekdays and must rely on mutual aid with other cities to fill the void. The only logical way to continue this reduction of response times would be to continue to add more staff and more shifts in future years. Finding funding for these improvements will no doubt be a major budget issue as the City budgets for 2009 and beyond.

If you have comments or questions about Fire Department calls and/or response times, we welcome you to contact Fire Chief John Berg at bergj@ci.fridley.mn.us.