Careers & Education

NH Fire Chief: Calls Have Dropped Since COVID-19 Pandemic

April 18, 2020

"Our call volume has dropped while we prepare for what could potentially be a call surge. We're still not sure yet what that's going to look like," said Dover's fire chief.

By Jeff McMenemy and Jeff McMenemy

Source Foster's Daily Democrat, Dover, N.H.

Editor's note: Find Firehouse.com's complete coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic here.

DOVER, NH—The number of calls city firefighters have responded to in fiscal year 2020 is expected to drop because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fire Chief Paul Haas estimated that the calls for the fiscal year, which ends on June 30, are likely to be "slightly lower than what they have been the last year and maybe the year before that."

Typically, the fire department responds to about 500 to 520 calls per month, but in March, the number of calls started dropping off, Haas told the City Council during a budget workshop meeting this week.

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He expects "the numbers to come in a little bit lower this year and that's essentially due to the crisis that we're in right now basically."

"Our call volume has dropped while we prepare for what could potentially be a call surge. We're still not sure yet what that's going to look like," Haas said. "But ultimately the overall call volume is going to drop because people are staying put."

Haas believes the trend the department has seen during the past few years of increasing call volume will return "as people start to come out and about, when typical things start to happen again on a regular basis."

Before the start of the pandemic, the department has seen what Haas described as "a continuous climb as we move through the years."

During last year's fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2019, the department responded to more than 6,000 calls, Haas said.

The "6,000-call threshold is really when our current staffing begins to get maxed out," the fire chief told the council during their Wednesday meeting.

In terms of the department's proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2021, it comes in at $10,079,419, which is a 2.6% increase over this year's $9,828,487 budget, Haas said.

The city budget is expected to be finalized later this spring.

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Visit the Foster's Daily Democrat (Dover, N.H.) at www.fosters.com

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