Belleville Fire and Emergency Services has dealt with an increase in the number of calls it has responded to in 2024 so far.
Fire Chief Dan Smith tells Quinte News that so far, they have seen a 15% to 20% increase in call volume from the year before.
One of the reasons is because of the current overdose crisis in the city with a little over 60% of total call volume this year related to medical emergencies in downtown Belleville.
Despite this increase, Smith says they are prepared, and have the ability to respond.
“At no point have we missed any calls,” Smith tells Quinte News.
“That’s one of the things that we try to keep reassuring the public, that we’re responding to a lot of emergencies, but we’re not missing anything. We kind of divide and conquer and we’ve got a lot of resources that we can pull from across the city. We’ve got multiple stations, we can pull back staff if required in order to continue to provide a service.”
Smith says the number of calls can come in waves with some days having a lot of calls and other days having a lull.
“It really varies throughout week to week, day to day,” Smith explained.
“I mean the day where we had the 13 overdoses, that kind of really was the last straw before the declaration that they also saw a couple of fires. That all happened within a few hours of all the medical emergencies so it was literally call after call after call. Is it taxing on our staff? Absolutely. You know, there’s fatigue that sets in, but we have programs in place to help protect our staff.”
Smith says the fire department will continue to work in tandem with EMS when required to do so.
“We respond based on a tiered-response agreement, and we respond with EMS, support them, or can perform triage while we wait for another ambulance to respond. So specifically, we will be there whenever we’re required and without delay.”
