Year in Review
2019 was a busy year for Redwood Meadows Emergency Services (RMES), here’s a breakdown on what we did:
Your volunteers responded to 280 calls for service throughout the year. On average, that’s a call every 31 hours all year long. Responders get up from bed, watching TV, doing things with their families, or, for many, working at their paying job to answer the call. They drop everything and jump into action every time a 911 call is made in our area.
Of those 280 calls, 139 of them (or 50% of total call volume) were for medical responses to aid residents and visitors of our area. This is why we maintain Primary Care Paramedics on our staff and ensure their training is kept up to date on everything from the current hot topics in pre-hospital care to the most mundane and ‘normal’ ailments or injuries we might come across.
The next most common type of call we attended was rescues, of which there were 72 (or 25% of total call volume). This includes everything from motor vehicle collisions to backcountry rescues to unlocking a car with a person (or animal) in distress inside.
Following that were actual fire responses, which numbered 37 (roughly 13% of total calls). Anything actually on fire (or a call type which could have led to a fire, i.e. alarm bells ringing) is in this category. 2019 was unusual in that there was little in the way of a dry season so we didn’t see as many outdoor fires as in past years. This doesn’t mean that it won’t come back with a vengeance, as is plainly obvious in other parts of the world right now. We’re going to continue our aggressive push for fire safety and prevention as all fire departments do.
The second-last category is hazmat (hazardous materials) responses, which counted for 6 calls or just over 2% of the total. Things like odors of natural gas or gasoline, or illness from carbon monoxide or other gases or products are included in this category.
Finally, there were 26 (9%) calls we just can’t categorize into one of the above groups. These are things such as special hazards calls (electrical problems, trees down on structures/powerlines, etc), helping other agencies (assisting police with an incident, or sending our specialized gear to assist in another town or district), and general service calls (picking up debris on the road, etc).
In addition to responding to calls, RMES members attended 48 3-hour training nights (all but 4 Tuesday nights of the entire year), and the standby shifts we staff every weekend of the year (and various holidays in between).
In total, RMES volunteer firefighters contributed a total of 13,105 hours of service in 2019. Thank you to our members’ families for supporting them (and the community) through this extensive commitment.
Until next month, stay safe!
