Racine WI Department May Expand as Calls Increase

RACINE — Calls to the Racine Fire Department are on the rise in early 2019. And in the next few years, the Fire Department may have to consider expansion to compensate for area growth, Chief Steve Hansen told the Racine Police and Fire Commission Monday.

The RFD has already responded to 2,503 calls between Jan. 1 and March 11. By the same time last year, the Fire Department had only responded to 2,390 calls.

That’s an increase from 34.14 calls per day in 2018 up to 35.76 calls per day in 2019, a jump of nearly 5 percent.

Only 2.7 percent of the department’s total calls this year are for structure fires, although they have increased by nearly 4.5 percent so far this year — from 64 structure fires through March 11, 2018, up to 67 so far this year.

“It’s really a reflection of the community and the demand for service on the Fire Department, which continues to grow every year,” Hansen said.

As a result of the increasingly busy department, Hansen said that the city may have to consider hiring more firefighter-paramedics in the next half-decade.

“There’s going to come a point in time where we’re going to have to look at adding additional personnel to the Fire Department … (in order) to accommodate this growth and demand for service,” Hansen said.

Successful health visits

The biggest increase came from “Mobile Integrated Healthcare” calls, where firefighter-paramedics make home visits to patients who have recently been discharged from Ascension All Saints Hospital.

Among the goals of the MIH program, Hansen said, are to “reduce hospital admissions” and transports of patients to hospitals for readmissions, which can save money for patients and save time for Ascension All Saints staff.

“So far this year, we’ve had 106 (MIH) visits,” Hansen said on March 18 — that’s more than one MIH call daily. “(We have a) very high success rate (and are) really developing a lot of good out in the community, working with everybody to make sure they have a healthier lifestyle and better quality of life.”

MIH calls also don’t cost the Fire Department anything other than time or resources, Hansen said, since it’s funded by an Ascension-provided grant.

“We have partnered in an innovative way to achieve this goal by providing primary care at home for at-risk people in the community. This approach is resulting in reducing unnecessary use of the Emergency Department as well as readmissions in to the hospital,” Kristin McManmon, president of Ascension All Saints, said last November.

The MIH partnership was announced last fall, targeting patients at the highest risk of being readmitted to the hospital.

Caledonia, too

Hansen is now the second local fire chief in less than a month to inform his municipality’s leaders that his department may soon need more staff.

Caledonia Fire Chief Richard Roeder, along with Battalion Chief Jeff Henningfeld, told the Caledonia Village Board earlier this month that the Fire Department is currently understaffed. They said it could use as many as 18 more firefighters.

Roeder and Henningfeld asked the board for permission to apply for a federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant that could have allowed the village to hire six more firefighters.

The Village Board rejected the request on March 11, instead promising to create an ad hoc committee to find another avenue and address the needs of Caledonia’s fire services.

———

Visit The Journal Times, Racine, Wisc. at www.journaltimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.