Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Since there was no Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Board meeting in September, Fire Chief Joel Shilling and Lutheran EMS Director of Operations Alicia Mediano gave two months’ worth of figures at October’s meeting on Tuesday.
Mediano said in July, Lutheran EMS had a total of 519 encounters, with 486 encounters in August.
“You’ll see that that was a big uptick for us,” she said.
There were 415 in June, 473 in May and 459 encounters in April.
“One of the things, though, that I do want to talk about was in July we had the county fair, which you guys all remember. During the county fair, we actually station two ambulances on site during the day. We keep one up on the main area and then we always bring a second dedicated ambulance in for those events. So we know the numbers in July will always be higher, simply because of the fair,” she stated.
This year at the fair, Mediano said they had a total of 35 encounters and only had to transport out two of those.
August was a very hot month, so she said they had a lot of heat emergencies and heat-related issues and that was reflected in their call numbers.
Of the 519 encounters in July, 407 were transported; and of the 486 encounters in August, 373 were transported.
“There was quite a few car seat installs that happened in the months of July and August, and that was from us continuing our car seat safety program. We actually had a car seat program. We had 14 people that stopped in that clinic, and then unfortunately we found that every single one of those installations we had to make a correction that could have been pretty significant if they would have been in an accident,” Mediano stated.
She said when it comes to car seats, a person doesn’t know what they don’t know and they’re happy to provide that education.
In his monthly fire report, Shilling said in July they had a total of 259 emergency responses, with 73 (28.2%) of those being overlapping incidents.
The 259 responses included 176 medical calls, 34 non-emergency calls, 28 public service calls, 11 hazardous situations, eight fire calls and two rescues.
By station, station 17 responded to 123 calls; station 13, 105; and station 15 responded to 31 calls.
The 136 hours of training in July included EMS, technical rescue, new recruit training and more. The firefighters provided seven hours of community service.
Shilling said of the 259 calls in July, they had a total of 467 actual apparatus response. “Again, just showing that not every call gets by with just one apparatus. There are some calls where all of our stations go out,” he said.
Moving on to August, they had 287 responses with 93 (32.4%) of those being overlapping incidents. Of those 287, Shilling said 178 were medical calls, 55 non-emergency calls, 37 public service calls, 15 hazardous situations, one fire call and one rescue.
By station, station 17 had 137 calls; station 13, 126; and station 15 had 24.
Firefighters had 125.25 hours of training, covering a variety of EMS topics, some CPR training, ladder training and pre-planning as well. They had 9.75 hours of community service in August.
Shilling said of the 287 calls, they had 312 actual apparatus responses.
In other business, the board:
• Approved the interlocal agreement between the fire territory and Kosciusko County for terminal services data for a cost to the fire territory of $1,732.50 for all of 2027.
Shilling said the agreement is something they’ve done for several years now.
• Approved the July and August expenditure reports for the operating fund and the equipment replacement fund.
• Approved the travel requests as presented by Shilling.
The next meeting of the WWFT Board is at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4 due to Election Day being on Tuesday, Nov. 3. They meet in the council chambers of City Hall.
