Saskatoon Fire Department sees record number of calls in 2022

Saskatoon’s Fire Department saw a record number of calls in 2022.

According to deputy fire chief Mike Ralston, there were 20,392 calls for service made last year, an 11 per cent increase over the 18,354 calls seen in 2021.

At the city’s Environment, Utilities and Corporate Services Committee meeting April 4, Ralston updated his department’s resource deployment priorities and presented the 2022 year in review report.

Ralston highlighted the rising number of calls for service, specifically in Saskatoon’s Downtown, Riversdale, Pleasant Hill, Confederation Park, Fairhaven, Nutana and Buena Vista areas.

“A closer look at Districts 1 and 2 shows a 12.2 per cent increase (in calls). As of December 31, 2022, the calls for service in these two districts is up 70 per cent since 2018,” he said.

The year-end report included information on the types of department calls for service. In 2022, there were 9,500 calls for emergency medical service – more than twice the number of fire suppression calls and higher than any other request for service.

Ralston told the committee the department was also having difficulty hitting its target response times.

“Calls for service that are beyond the 240 seconds travel time from our current stations are referred to as ‘out of range’ calls. The out of range regions in the north and south areas of District 2 experienced nine per cent and 14 per cent increases, respectively,” he said.

District 2 includes the far southwest areas of Saskatoon, which saw up to a 334 second response time, or around 5.5 minutes. Ralston said getting new stations built in that district is a high priority.

“The data presented here is concerning,” said Coun. Hilary Gough. “We have an urgent problem on our hands in the west end of Saskatoon.”

She said the fire department has been doing tremendous work to keep up, but the numbers show very clearly that their ability to do so without more infrastructure was limited and wouldn’t be resolved with out the new fire halls, staff and trucks.

The committee unanimously received the reports as information.