By: Mark Vest | St. Clair Shores Sentinel | Published February 8, 2023
ST. CLAIR SHORES — According to a Facebook post from Jan. 1 by the St Clair Shores Fire Department, the number of runs they took increased from 8,405 in 2021 to 8,720 in 2022.
Fire Chief James Piper said this was not surprising.
“Our year-over-year average increase is about 3%-4% in call volume and this fell within that same range,” Piper said in an email.
City Manager Dustin Lent said the only recent year this wasn’t reflected was in 2021.
“We went down quite a bit in ’21 just because nobody was calling EMS and the majority of our runs are all EMS runs but not necessarily fire runs, so when COVID was really prevalent in 2021, most people were trying to avoid the hospitals and or calling EMS,” Lent said. “So, in 2021, our numbers actually went down.”
The runs they took the most, Piper confirmed, were EMS calls, and this is where they also saw the increase.
“Overall, the country has an aging population and they are statistically more likely to need the ambulance,” Piper said in an email. “This is the predicted increase in call volume that we have seen as the city grows and the population ages. We are happy that the city has a great fire and EMS capability to meet the continued needs of our citizens.”
Piper also said they were able to stay fully staffed through the year.
“The department uses a minimum staffing model each day,” Piper said. “If a shift is below the required number due to retirement, sickness or injury, one of our other Fire Department employees will work on that day on overtime.”
Piper said COVID-19-related calls have gone down about 14% between 2021 and 2022.
Overall, Lent said everything has gone pretty smoothly with the departments and that they are very fortunate to have great department heads.
“Very fortunate, everything kind of ran pretty smoothly this year,” Lent said. “We didn’t have any issues that I could think of.”