Jan. 13, 2023 Tacoma firefighters say 80 percent of the 49,000 calls last year were EMS-related.
Source Firehouse.com News
Tacoma firefighters are feeling the results of a growing city — an increase in responses especially for EMS.
“We’ve noticed an uptick in our call volume. Notably in 2022, we responded to over 49,000 incidents,” Tacoma Fire spokesperson Joe Meinecke told King5. “Of those 49,000 incidents, eighty-percent, or about 40,000, were for emergency medical service.”
While fighters are trained to handle medical emergencies, the fire department only has so much to work with. “The obvious concern is that we won’t have enough resources to help everybody or our resources will be committed and we’ll have a significant event happen simultaneously,” he explained.
Tacoma city officials sees the department is stretched thin and have been working on a plan a plan to get additional revenue. They are proposing raising the EMS back to where it was previously — $0.50 for every $1,000 of assessed property value.
The levy fell to $0.32 due to higher property values since 2006.
Meinecke said the additional revenue is long overdue and badly needed. “It’s been since 2006 that we’ve had an EMS levy renewal before, or potentially before the community, and so that’s seventeen years,” he said. “That’s quite a long time and we’re at the point now where we really need to add additional resources.”
Boosting staffing will result in faster response times.