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High Country Fire and Rescue reports increase in calls in 2016

High Country Fire responds to a house fire near Valle in January of 2017.

High Country Fire responds to a house fire near Valle in January of 2017.

High Country Fire and Rescue’s call response numbers for their jurisdiction reported a rise in calls from 2016 compared to 2015, but an overall drop in wildland fire incidents.

Volunteer firemen responded to 253 calls last year along the highway 64 corridor to Valle, which is an increase of 29 calls over

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graphic by Wendy Howell/WGCN

High Country Fire and Rescue calls from 2014-2016.

2015, and an increase of 39 over 2014.

The average monthly calls ranged from 18 in February and April to 29 in June.

The fire and rescue organization spent the majority of their time responding to emergency medical service calls. In 2016, they responded to 175 EMS incidents in 2016, as compared to 154 in 2015 and 153 in 2014.

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Submitted photo

High Country Fire conducts an interagency training with Sherwood Forest last summer.

“Our response area goes from Red Lake up to Valle,” said Fire Chief Robert Trotter. “Our medical responses have gone up a bit over last year.”

Trotter said they often assist other departments with calls and most recently have been assisting Junipine Fire Department with medical calls due to their lack of EMTs.

High Country Fire responded to 41 fire calls over the year. Of those calls, 21 were for wildland fires and 20 were structural fires. In 2015 they responded to 39 fire calls, including 28 wildland fire calls and 11 structural fires. In 2014 they had 47 fire calls, including

25 wildland fire calls and 22 structural fire calls.

“Of those structural fire calls, about seven were fully engulfed structure fires,” Trotter said. “Many of those are simple calls like chimney issues or a sparking appliance.”

Trotter said the department responds with state and federal firefighters for wildland fires. He said the majority of the fires are lightning strikes.

The organization responded to 23 injury traffic accidents along highway 64 in 2016. In 2015 they responded to 16, and in 2015 they responded to 10.

“That figure is for accidents with injuries,” Trotter said. “We probably have about three times that amount that we respond to without injuries.”

Trotter said despite the increase in callouts, the department has not seen a corresponding increase in volunteers.

“We have 12 volunteers,” he said. “We are like most of the volunteer fire departments around Williams in that we don’t have enough volunteers right now.”

Trotter said the department will often see a rise in volunteers, but then life style changes and jobs require the volunteers to move which leaves the department short of staff.


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