SWMAP,

We don't seem to be much busier in your neighborhood than in the past [[in reference to fires). All of the new ambulances have the same wining/wailing sirens as our fire trucks-this is a major change from their old sirens. In my neighborhood [[near a hospital), I have to remind myself that what I am hearing then seeing are ambulances not firetrucks at all hours.

We are busier per firefighter the last 4 years since we have considerably less ff's in the dept and less engines/trucks and firefighters on a daily basis. Our total run numbers seem to be on pace for less than 30,000 runs this year[[about 27-28k). It seems we have been between 30-34k runs per year for the last 25 years. Actual fire runs are hard to say, because it is harder to find the detailed numbers the last 5 years. These were always readily available in the past [[somwhere between 7-12k fires per year including structures, cars, trash, etc.)

Like I mentioned earlier, we definitely have a higher workload per firefighter than 5 years ago and we still [[by far) have the highest fire rate in the country. We do in 2 weeks what a NYC/Chicago firefighter does in 1 year concerning structure fires. This is not an exageration, just ask any truthful firefighter in those cities how many structure fires they personally respond to in a day or 1-2 weeks. They will usually correct you with how many they respond to in a year which is closer to our biweekly figure.