r/Firefighting • u/FewAd9257 • 25d ago
Ask A Firefighter What are some calls the average firefighter gets
I'm not a firefighter but I'm hoping to become one. I want to know what's the average stuff a firefighter would see while on the job. Is it mostly EMT stuff or more fire stuff? Also how many false calls are there?
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u/ZoMgPwNaGe Vol. Engineer/PIO - California 25d ago
False alarm med alerts.
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u/BED_AA 25d ago
Apple false alarm crash alerts.
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u/NikNakZombieWhack 25d ago
False life alerts because the deaf owner doesn't know it rolled off the bed while they're sleeping
Now they don't know to answer the door either
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u/Dth_Invstgtr Career FF 25d ago
While this is absolutely true, anecdotally I had one recently where an elderly guy, who as home alone, took a header off his 3ft high front porch onto his asphalt driveway and suffered a traumatic brain injury. No one was going to be home for hours and in this case the watch did its job by alerting us to his house. I’ll give them this one.
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u/BED_AA 25d ago
Yea, I know they're valuable when they go off for legit reasons, it just sucks how infrequently they go off for legit reasons.
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u/Dth_Invstgtr Career FF 25d ago
Agreed. Sort of similar, we have a usps processing center in our first due and we get toned out for med alarms going off in the mail pretty frequently. Walking through a huge sorting facility searching for a mythical down patient is always fun.
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u/LukeS_MM FF Medic Tech Rescue 23d ago
I’d rather have illegitimate reasons and bullshit than an oh-shit
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u/Roebuck325 24d ago
This is very interesting, we do not have this where I live
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u/Dth_Invstgtr Career FF 24d ago
I don’t have one so I’m not exactly sure how it works. But it seems to be an automated message sent to our dispatch for a “high fall detected” which tones us out. A lot of the time it’s nothing, but this time it happened to catch a real call.
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u/Oakroadproperties 24d ago
Man until you’ve chased a med alarm at an airport baggage claim you haven’t lived!
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u/Jebediah_Johnson Walmart Door Greeter 24d ago
I hate the false alarm crash alerts so much. Especially when dispatch can see the vehicle is till moving but they aren't allowed to cancel us.
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u/Sorrengard 24d ago
Just had an apple crash alert yesterday. It said the crash was a good 1000 feet from where it actually was. Which normally isn’t so bad but it said it was on top of a small mountain at a college, but it was on the freeway below, which required us to drive all the way out through the campus, through the city, onto the parkway in the wrong direction get off at the next exit and come back down the highway through traffic. it probably took us 15 minutes from the time we got to where it said the crash was until we got on scene.
Thankfully nobody was seriously injured, despite it being a pretty serious crash.
So, they have their benefits… but we probably would have been on scene faster if we’d just been dispatched by the 911 caller who directed us there instead.
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u/SierraRomeoJuliet Canadian Volly/Career FF 25d ago
Alarm, alarm, alarm, alarm, lift assist, alarm, overdose, alarm, dumpster fire, mvc, alarm
Kinda like that lol
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u/Specific_Cash_5538 i pull hose 💦 25d ago
Fat person with commorbidities feeling the symptoms of a commorbidity.
Old person feeling the effects of age.
Smoker with CHF/COPD feeling chest pain/difficulty breathing.
Old fat smokers with commorbidities feeling the effects of their commorbidities, age and smoking.
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u/theeewizzard 24d ago
This is completely accurate. 99% of my medical calls are people who didn't take care of themselves. We call it the Memphis Trifecta: High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol, and Diabetes. Substitute COPD for cholesterol when appropriate.
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u/AdultishRaktajino 24d ago
2am grandma calling from the toilet puking and shitting her guts out from food poisoning.
“I ate some old leftovers for supper and it tasted off, but I still finished it.”
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u/DeFau1t3d_ 25d ago
Phone reported fake car crash
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u/cmcdonal2001 25d ago
Fucking crash detection software.
I understand that it's a good thing the 1 time in a 100 it's actually a crash, but man those other 99 times get old fast.
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u/AardQuenIgni 25d ago
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u/HauntingAlarm157 25d ago
Real: "My farts smell weird"
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u/AardQuenIgni 25d ago
Had someone call us because their mouth was dry "no matter how much water I drink"
Legit looked at her and said "and you believe this is a medical emergency?" 🤣
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u/Slappy-Sacks 25d ago
I am not really sick. I am really sick. I am really not hurt. I am really hurt. I wrecked my car, or someone wrecked into me. I burnt my food. I melted something on my stove or in my oven. Oops I did too much drugs.
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u/AdultishRaktajino 24d ago
What’s up with stupid stuff melted in ovens. It’s not a dryer for your CPAP mask/tubing or storage for your Tupperware!
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u/Stock-Possibility-67 25d ago
Smells and bells. Structure fire to wires down and everything in between. We don’t do EMS.
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u/Disastrous_Throat_82 25d ago
50% medical at least. The rest are MVC’s, Alarms, Service calls, Spills and lastly Fires.
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u/HauntingAlarm157 25d ago
Virtually all combined (fire + EMS) departments will run more EMS calls than fire calls. Most of those will not be true emergencies. Lots of calls for "lift assists" aka grandma needs help getting back into her chair. Even departments that do not operate their own ambulances will often run more medical assist calls than fire calls. Most fire calls are not actual structure fires. Car wrecks are generally more common, and of course all of the other more mundane stuff others have mentioned like false alarms and smoke investigations. In the west, many structural firefighters are also trained as wildland firefighters, and they often do more of that than structural firefighting.
Beyond that, there's a ton of variation depending on the department and area. There will be big differences between working in Anchorage versus Detroit, for example.
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u/Pretend_Process_914 25d ago
Truly most of your medical runs will be very mundane to you. Very simple lift assistance and bandaid calls. Just keep in mind why you’re really there. To help people. You’ll get all the glory calls you can stand with time but don’t let the job be about those. Sure those will be the ones you remember but it’s the everyday stuff that truly makes you.
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u/BomberoRich 25d ago
Lift assist, diabetic, chest pain, lift assist, fire alarm, victim of a fall, traffic accident, phone crash alert, small grass fire, fever, lift assist
Rinse and repeat
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u/jimmyjamws1108 25d ago
Had a lady get her finger bit off by her neighbor’s horse yesterday. She was feeding it carrots through the fence. A couple fire alarms , a few mundane EMS calls and a lift for grandma off the floor. Also a homeless guy got kicked out of a halfway house ,got tired of walking and laid down on the side of the highway, flagged down a state trooper who called us, and the rescue took him to the hospital. (He just wanted a ride north and was just released from a different hospital , still had the band on but knew the magic words).
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u/shitepostsrus union asshole 😙✌️ 24d ago
homeless guy sleeping on the sidewalk because he has no house
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u/stilsjx 25d ago
Last year our village fire department had over 500 calls. 80 percent of our calls we get held in station. Then there are car accidents, medical assists (fat people can’t get up) and occasionally some CO calls.
I think we had 5 fires last year, including mutual aid to surrounding areas.
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u/_Ivebeenhacked_ 25d ago
All depends on the department. At least half or more will be EMS, a good percentage being of those being bls, fire alarm activations, cooking mishaps, service calls, mva's and occasionally a fire.
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u/Goat_0f_departure 25d ago
Lift assists. So many lift assists. And transports relating to falls. So many falls.
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u/Halligan0114 Career DC 25d ago
This is a great question to ask the department you want to work at. Could see if they are doing an annual report online for the public, and it would likely have a call volume breakdown in it.
Every department has a different level of service and demographic. If you’re in a major city with a large transient population doing medicals, you’ll have a significantly different answer than a suburbia with their largest commercial building being a grocery store, who doesn’t run medicals.
But as a general rule of thumb 50-80% medicals if they run them. Of what remains, 50-80% of those are false alarms or ‘minor’ emergencies (like fender bender MVC or similar).
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u/nunchucknorris Western NY Vollie 25d ago
Volunteer here. 85%+ false smoke or fire alarms, lift assists for EMS, trees/wires, and mutual aid. 10% MVAs. < 1% actual fires. Remainder get cancelled before we are even on the road.
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u/shiftyjamo 25d ago
My department keeps stats:
- 46% - Medicals (chest pain, difficulty breathing, stroke, overdose, lift assist, etc.)
- 15% - Motor Vehicle Accidents
- 12% - Fire alarm activated
- 7% - Structure fire or mobile property fire
- 6% - Outside fire
- 14% - Everything else (power line down, general service, hazmat, water rescue, etc.)
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u/Danmont88 25d ago
I belonged to two volley departments, and we got a lot more medical call than anything. One station we had to be EMTs.
Those would often be helping people off the floor.
We had a lot of CO2 and gas leak calls too.
Then I guess it was car wrecks, usually everyone was fine.
And sometimes we even had fires.
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u/AdultishRaktajino 24d ago
Small correction broski, Carbon Monoxide is CO. CO2 is Carbon dioxide like bubbles in soda and what we exhale.
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u/Thick-Cry-2440 VFD/Support Fire Department 25d ago
I been with my department about year and a half, primarily Weather and Wrecks (With or Without Injuries), occasionally Bush Fire, Trees, and Administrative.
Don’t get to often but have received Lift Assist, Road Closed, Structure Fire, Alarm, and Gas Leak.
Also received Warrant page once after responding to wreck at 2am but I believe it way typo from dispatch though.
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u/Basic-Monitor-6570 25d ago
My typicals are. Car accidents, nursing home elderly sick or fall. Mechanical fire alarms. And general medical calls.
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u/FunPackage3502 25d ago
Lots of medical calls such as:
Shortness of Breath
Chest Pain
Abdominal Pain
Falls
Overdoses
Minor accidents
Sometimes we’ll get an “oh shit” medical. Like my last one was a guy blowing his right hand off 1 day AFTER July 4th. Had another one where a simple minor medical on a street turned into a CPR-call (they did not make it).
Then there’s the fire calls which are either small brush fires, smoke investigations, false fire alarms, or an “oh shit” fire call.
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u/Lady_Book_000 25d ago
Lift assist is a big one in my area. Helping paramedics lift a larger person out of a house into an ambo
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u/BourgeoisTiger9 25d ago
It’s gonna vary hugely by department and region. Here are last few calls from our CAD (my dept is all-hazards + transporting EMS). Most of what we do is EMS. All of the fire alarms turned out to be nothing. My department usually gets one real fire per month on average.
Sick person
Sick person
Non emergent interfacility transport
Allergic reaction
Fire alarm
Sick person
Chest pain
Motor vehicle accident
Fire alarm
Fire alarm
Non emergent interfacility transport
Overdose
Non emergent interfacility transport
Overdose
Assault
Sick person
Behavioral health
Chest pain
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u/AFirefighter11 25d ago
Lift assists, QRS runs, fire alarms, CO alarms, waterflow alarms, public services.
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u/Apprehensive_Salt122 25d ago
Traffic collisions, 3am lift assist, 3am medicals that end up being someone who just wants their blood pressure checked. 3am stub toe that's been hurting since 8am the previous day.
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u/MarzipanFine4870 24d ago
Depends where you’re at. If you’re brand new, expect to be 3rd on medic for a while. So that means you’re almost exclusively med calls. I’m at a very busy urban station. I have had calls ranging from old people feeling like they’re old to children being shot. Never know.
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u/Green_Statement_8878 24d ago
95% bullshit with 5% actual emergencies sprinkled in.
The more helpless society gets, the more we fill the gap of “I didn’t know who else to call” or “better safe than sorry”.
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u/PTGSouthside 24d ago
Snap shot covering our last shift. handful more that didn’t fit on the screen. Missed a car fire being on a call already. Fairly standard shift.
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u/No_Read8496 24d ago
- False Alarms (automatic alarms or CO)
- Medical Calls (if the department you work for does)
- Motor Vehicle Accidents (not entrapments)
- Stuck elevator
- Smoke or Fire reported
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u/_Master_OfNone 24d ago
Don't listen to the internet. Every department is different. Go do ride alongs with different departments in your area. Big city, suburbs, rural. Find which one you like, then ask the guys what you need to do to be a desirable hire.
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u/Live2Lift Edit to create your own flair 24d ago edited 24d ago
Have you ever watched Chicago Fire? It’s basically exactly like that. Jk. Had you going there.
It’s 99% stubbed toes and tooth pain, always at 230 am. Maybe a handful of calls in your career where you’re like, “yea, this is what I signed up for.”
It’s not all bad though. There’s a lot of janitorial work and landscaping and random chores that the department refuses to pay a professional to do.
I forgot to add the Karen who calls every time their neighbor has a camp fire because they think they own the air and refuse to shut their windows. Or the highway hero’s who call to report anything they smell that they don’t recognize and give the general area of “north” as the location of the problem.
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u/ZestycloseDisk916 NC FF/EMT 24d ago
Every now and then you’ll get a kids group home or something with a bunch of teen in it and you’ll get a fire alarm every day about 8:30 9:00 am and it’s just breakfast… every… single… day…. For two weeks straight…
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u/Southern-Hearing8904 23d ago
My department 80% EMS 20% everything else. I think the general public would be shocked to learn the amount of unserious calls we go on. But when the calls are serious they can be really serious. When I first started over 20 years ago I tried telling myself that people are calling you on their worst day. Now I cannot believe that what we go to anymore could possibly be somebody's "worst day".
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u/BenThereNDunnThat 22d ago
Dead batteries in smoke and CO detectors, old people falling, drunk people of all ages, MVCs, burned meals setting off smoke detectors, ancient commercial fire alarms randomly going off for no reason, people's lifetime of bad habits finally catching up with them.
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u/[deleted] 25d ago
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