KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Rural Metro said that they responded to a total of 2,139 incidents during December 2022, with an average of three firefighters per truck. They also said that during all of 2022, they responded 22,330 times.
In December, they said medical calls made up most of the responses, at 965 incidents. The second-highest type of calls were false alarms at 342 responses. There were 122 reported residential fires, and 305 still assignments. Those include car fires, brush fires and rubbish fires.
On average, they said it took them five minutes to respond to a call. They also said the number of false alarms and fires was unusually high during December. They said the rise in reports could be explained by the extreme cold during the month, which they said caused pipes and sprinkler lines to freeze.
During the year, they said Halls Engine 230 was the busiest station with 2,422 responses, and Farragut Engine 241 was the second-busiest with 2,070 responses. They also said medical calls made up about half of all calls during the year.
Throughout the year, they average a staffing of around two crew members per engine. They also said that the value of all the property fires they responded to was $194,734,824. They reported around $8.9 million of property loss, meaning they managed to prevent around 95% of the valued properties they responded to.
Rural Metro said they were in the process of transitioning to new radio frequencies which could give them clearer radio traffic and more safety on incident scenes. They said they have been on the same frequency since 1980.
Upgrading their radio systems could cost $1.2 million, they said.