Fire department response times have improved since Fort Saskatchewan added more firefighters, according to a report released to City Council this week.

Local fire trucks arrive on scene within 600 seconds (10 minutes) 95 per cent of the time — a 13 per cent improvement over 2021.

Fort Saskatchewan’s goal is for the first fire truck to arrive within 10 minutes every time.

This improvement is due mainly to getting firefighters on the trucks sooner. This “Chute Time” has been reduced to 97 seconds for a fire and 94 second for a medical emergency. This averaged 166 seconds for fire calls in 2022.

A second fire crew on duty, station renovations, and movement of apparatus in the station bays have all aided in improving these chute times, the report notes.

Local firefighters are being called more often than ever, however, especially to medical emergencies and alarms, the report adds.

Fire trucks are now called to medical emergencies when ambulances are delayed, and the number of these calls has increased 10 fold since 2017. Fort fire trucks responded to 616 medical emergencies in 2023, compared to just 76 in 2017. The number of alarm calls has also increased from 52 in 2017 to 271 in 2023.

These two categories made up 84 per cent of all calls for the Fort Saskatchewan fire department in 2023. They made up just 60 per cent of calls in 2017.