Whitby’s firefighters are responding to a rising number of medical incidents, but it isn’t cause for alarm; officials say it is mainly due to the return of protocols from before the pandemic.
“From 2020 to 2022, firefighters responded exclusively to life-threatening medical situations,” he explained in an interview with Durham Radio News. “By 2023, fully reinstated their pre-pandemic operational procedures and started to respond to those medical calls that we typically responded to prior to the COVID pandemic.”
In 2023, they responded to 6,864 emergency calls in 2023, up from 4,363 the year prior; this reflects a one-year rise of 57 per cent. However, that figure was actually approaching 6,000 back in 2019. Its lowest figure was in 2020, at around 3,500.