Moscow fire responds to historic number of calls

The Moscow Volunteer Fire Department on Saturday responded to a shop fire on South Highway 95 that consumed and destroyed the building.

It started when someone added diesel fuel to a wood stove fire, causing the flames to spread out of control, according to the fire department’s investigation. Fire crews controlled the fire quickly and one out of the seven people in the building during the incident needed to be transported to the hospital for injuries.

It could have been a lot worse, Chief Brian Nickerson said.

“They’re lucky,” he said. “We almost had probably seven bodies. It was that significant, that fast.”

It was all part of the day’s work for Nickerson’s crew of volunteers, but their days have been historically busy lately.

With two months left in the year, the Moscow Volunteer Fire Department has responded to more 911 calls in 2021 than any previous recorded year.

“I don’t think there’s any time in the history of the department that we’ve been this busy as far as call volume, which is kind of a big deal for an all-volunteer organization,” he said.

His department has responded to 2,293 emergency calls from Jan. 1 to Thursday. Nickerson said that is nearly 400 more calls than what they responded to all of last year.

While the number of fire emergencies they responded to this year is close to the yearly average, the Moscow Volunteer Fire Department has seen a 10 percent increase in medical calls from last year, he said.

Nickerson suspects the COVID-19 pandemic is the major factor contributing to this jump in medical emergencies. His staff does not always know if a patient they are responding to has COVID-19, but Nickerson said he cannot see any other reason why there would be so many more medical now compared to past years.

According to a Thursday report from Gritman Medical Center, the hospital has admitted 93 people with COVID-19 since June 1.

Crews are not handling one call at a time, either. Nickerson said a little more than a third of the time, they are responding to two calls at once.

Given these challenges, Nickerson praised the way his staff is handling the call load.

“I am very, very impressed with how we as a volunteer organization can continue to provide the service that we provide with the amount of calls that we have,” he said.

The Moscow Volunteer Fire Department currently has seven full-time staff and approximately 105 volunteers, Nickerson said. The chief said that while they are doing great work, ideally he would love to have another 20 people volunteering.

Anticipating what will happen next year is “a shot in the dark,” he said, but he expects the 2022 call volume will be higher than normal, as well.

“I just think we’re going to stay above our normal average that we’ve had for the last six, seven years,” he said.

Kuipers can be reached at akuipers@dnews.com.

“I don’t think there’s any time in the history of the department that we’ve been this busy as far as call volume, which is kind of a big deal for an all-volunteer organization.”

Brian Nickerson, chief of the Moscow Volunteer Fire Department