Every firefighter thinks he knows how busy he is. If you ever want to know, just ask him during shift change tomorrow morning. In today’s world of fire-based EMS delivery, urban community-driven fire departments like ours are busy in many ways. The real question is, though, “How busy is ‘busy’?”
There are many ways to determine how well you use your community’s resources-so many ways, in fact, that each department probably tackles this topic uniquely. However, when you want to measure your department against other similar-sized agencies, a problem arises. There is no standard set for determining how busy is “busy.” Credible leaders move their organizations away from assumptions and subjective theories and make critical decisions based on and driven by real data.
In 2015, Henrico County (VA) Division of Fire (Henrico Fire), in central Virginia, responded to 46,310 incidents. Protecting the upper half of the metro-Richmond region, Henrico Fire staffs all 20 of its firehouses 24 hours a day. An advanced life support ambulance sits in 15 of those stations, and each ambulance is staffed by the same firefighters riding the engines, ladder trucks, or squads. The ambulances largely remain in quarters throughout the day and do not roam or sit on the streets. With no revenue recovery in place, Henrico Fire still provides totally free emergency medical services (EMS) and transport to our citizens.
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