ERIN — When ambulances are stuck at the hospital unloading patients, the local fire fighters are attending medical assist calls.
So the Erin/Hillsburgh Fire Department went from attending 53 medical assist calls in 2020 to 32 in 2021 then 109 in 2022.
Jim Sawkins, director of fire/emergency services and fire chief, could see the spike in medical assist calls coming.
He explained this during his fourth quarter report to the Erin council, Thursday evening.
“Fourth quarter report, basically in line with what my predictions were third quarter, that we’d be somewhere in the vicinity of plus 100 calls over the previous two years in end year totals,” Sawkins said.
Even in just the fourth quarter of 2022 there were 51 medical assist calls, more than the entire year of 2021 at 32 similar calls.
“As you can see by the report the medical assist calls have virtually tripled over the previous two years. Well doubled over the one in 2020 but tripled last year,” Sawkins said.
Sawkins explained why the fire department has being seeing so many medical assist calls.
“As mentioned earlier, that is a result of, as I say you see it on the news all the time about the ambulances being stuck up at the hospital waiting to unload. Well press never acknowledges the fact that when they’re sitting at the hospital somebody is still responding to those calls, and that is your fire department,” Sawkins said.
Jesse Gault is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program.
