Geneseo Fire Department

Fire and ambulance service tallies record number of calls

In his annual report to the Geneseo Village Board, Fire Chief Andrew Chanler cited record tallies for both fire and ambulance calls for the department’s active year beginning April 1 and ending March 31.

The 2011-12 numbers are 284 fire calls (compared to 267 in 2010-11) and 1,696 ambulance calls (compared to 1,612 in 2010-11 and the old record of 1,645 in 2005-6, which was the period just before the Skilled Nursing Facility departed from Geneseo for its new location in Mount Morris).

Fire calls were about equally occurring between the village and town. Approximately 90 of the calls were associated with motor vehicle accidents. The were 40 actual structural fires and a fair number of false alarms, along with a number of mutual aid assists outside Geneseo. Meanwhile, the fire department required mutual aid for itself on just one occasion of a barn fire, and over the past three years, on just three occasions.

The number of hours which fire and ambulance volunteers give remains astounding: 38,455 in 2011-12, increasing above the 35,636 in 2010-11. Chanler suggested the increase is mostly due to the practice of now having four-man rather than three-man crews on the ambulances. Indeed, ambulance volunteers gave 24,731 hours during which they were exclusively on call to make runs.

Busiest time for fire calls is noon through early evening, with nighttime being slowest. Ambulances stay busy throughout the day, with 5 to 8 a.m. being their slowest time.

The responsibility of administering the fire and ambulance personnel services and training, were it being done by paid employees, would require the equivalent of two full time positions, Chanler estimates.