Palm Coast Fire Department has responded to 8,000 calls since Oct. 1

Palm Coast Observer
News

The Palm Coast Fire Department has answered almost 8,000 calls for service since Oct. 1, 2023, Fire Chief Kyle Berryhill said.

In an overview presentation to the Palm Coast City Council on March 26, Berryhill said that PCFD received and responded to 7,983 service calls since fiscal year 2024, which began on Oct. 1. In the calendar year of 2023, the department responded to over 15,000 calls for service and in fiscal year 2023 — spanning Oct. 1, 2022 to Sept. 31, 2023 — it responded to 14,300 calls.

The fire department has a response-time goal of reaching a call in less than 7 minutes, at least 85% of the time. In the calls received between Oct. 1, 2023 and March 2024, Berryhill said, the fire department has made it to the scene in less than 7 minutes 82.3% of the time. Once there, 80% of fires were contained to the room of origin and 29.5% of cardiac arrest victims were able to be resuscitated on-site.

“We want to be a model fire department," Berryhill said. "We want to be something that people can look to and emulate. And if we're not doing that, we want to know about it."

The presentation was one of several year-to-date overviews on city departments. Berryhill said since the PCFD just received two new fire engines this year the fire department will not be requesting any new engines or staffing positions.

Instead, the department will be finalizing designs and beginning the construction process of its two new fire stations, Stations 22 and 26, in fiscal year 2024 and 2025 and planning to purchase replacements for the fire engines Engine 22 and Tower 24 in fiscal year 2026.

To be more prepared for the purchases, Berryhill said, the PCFD is planning to save for the purchase of the new fire engines with a capital improvement plan.

If the department did not change its approach, he said, the recent changes in the fire engine market meant that the PCFD could expect to spend $750,000 to replace Engine 22 and around $2 million to replace Tower 24.

“What our plan is, is that you won’t notice, from a budgetary standpoint, that we’re making big purchases, because we’ve done such a great job of [planning],” Berryhill said.