In July, the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Protection Territory had 261 responses. Of those, 61 incidents were overlapping (23.37%).
In August, the WWFT had 306 incidents with 92 (30.07%) overlapping.
Fire Chief Brian Mayo drew the WWFT Board’s attention to those figures Tuesday during their monthly meeting, adding that they had three calls running at one time on Tuesday.
“That’s starting to be the norm as well,” he said. “So, whenever we talk about manpower and apparatus and personnel and ambulances for that matter, too, it’s not uncommon - I don’t know if it was today or yesterday - where there were multiple EMS calls going on and there were no ambulances, no fire trucks left.”
Mayo said CARES (Community Assistance, Resources, Emergency Services) Coordinator Mikaela Bixler took an EMS call Monday because she happened to be one floor down from where the EMS call was made.
“It’s just going to show you that the call volume is hitting - the amount of activity is probably the best way of describing it - continues to increase, and the EMS call she took was a legit difficulty breathing call,” he said. “It was not a CARES call that she went to. She was at a CARES call and went up a floor to an EMS call. So, we’re very busy.”
Councilman Mike Klondaris asked why those numbers were going up, and if people were more aware of just reaching out for help or if there was just more distress in the community.
Mayo said there’s not a rational answer.
Alicia Mediano, Lutheran EMS director of operations, said, “We’ve seen two different things. We’ve seen where - because we kind of map it based off of population and we’ve mapped it out to kind of where we’re seeing more of those calls, kind of like a hot map idea. And we have seen as the community continues to build, those areas are getting more calls than we’ve had before. So in areas where we’ve added hotels, we’ve seen more calls in those areas than we’ve ever had before.”
Since Covid-19, they’ve also seen that, medically, patients are “more unstable because for a period of time, they decided to avoid the healthcare system because the fear of getting infected, the fear of getting sick, those kind of situations and we’re now playing that catch-up. So those are two things that we’ve noticed on the health care side.”
Klondaris asked if the calls were coming from the hotels and if the people making the calls were out-of-towners.
Mediano said it was a mix of people and things. On weekends, when there’s an event in the area and there’s more people staying in the hotels, there may be more calls from people staying in the hotels, especially over the summer months.
Mayo noted that not all the calls were for EMS. As an example, he said Monday night there was a car crash and vehicle fire at about the same time. “So it’s just volume and activity,” he said.
In other business:
• Mediano reported Lutheran EMS is seeing patients with the flu this year sooner than they typically have in past years, by about a month or two.
• CARES Director Chris Fancil reported CARES is getting busier and busier.
“We’re working hand-in-hand with some other entities that are trying to do some different ideas. We’ve met with the Warsaw Police Department to talk about some ideas we have with them. The sheriff’s department, we talked about how CARES can come alongside them and help them with some programs they’re currently working on,” he said.
Two weeks ago, he said they did a soft launch of the resource website he’s been talking to the board about for a while. They’re still not completely happy with it, but it’s out there, he said, and can be found at caresresources.com.
He wasn’t sure if the phone app was up yet, but it’s coming. The website and app are thanks to a grant from the Kosciusko County Community Foundation.
• The board approved for the fire territory to enter a contract and scope of work with One Solution Freedom Fire (Central Square) for a Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)-enabled application for $1,600 annually. The Board of Public Works and Safety approved the request last month. Mayo said it was a real game-changer and force multiplier.
• The board also approved a number of travel requests, some of which had already taken place in August or September. The board did not have a meeting in September due to a lack of quorum.