PEORIA, Ill. – The Peoria Fire Department was busy in 2022.
Fire Chief Shawn Sollberger says the department responded to 20,312 calls last year. Of those calls, 804 of them were related to fire incidents. He says what stood out to him last year was the BioUrja incident for how unique it was, and an increase in arsons which investigators are looking into a reason for that.
The majority of calls last year were for rescue and emergency services, with 15,836 calls. Those can range from someone under cardiac arrest, narcan for an overdose, or other advanced life support services.
“We did have an uptick in ALS calls, ALS drugs used, meaning our paramedics using advanced life support drugs to help the patient, we did see an uptick in that,” Sollberger said.
Sollberger said the partnership the department has with AMT is vital in responding to those EMS calls and keeping people alive.
He says the number of overall calls last year was one of the highest in the department’s history. Because of that, Sollberger says he’s concerned about keeping up with the amount of calls that come in.
“People are going to call 911, and we have to respond. So that’s the difficultly in knowing potentially when you have limited resources and limited budgets, how do you continue to respond to those calls?” Sollberger said.
Sollberger did cite putting Engine 2 back in service and receiving grants to help get the resources needed. He adds that the department does have regular meetings to ensure that resources and firefighters are being used efficiently on calls.
Sollberger says his hope for 2023 is that preventative measures start to sink in, and there’s a decrease in fire and EMS calls.
