OCEAN CITY — Resort officials this week got a briefing on the performance of the Ocean City Fire Department (OCFD) for the 2017 season and perhaps the biggest takeaway is a “remarkable” reduction in response times.
OCFD Chief Chris Larmore on Tuesday presented the 2017 performance and evaluation review of his department for the summer season to the Mayor and Council on Tuesday. According to Larmore, the total number of calls for service declined slightly in 2017 compared to the summer of 2016.
The OCFD responded to 3,108 calls for service during the 2017 season, down slightly from 3,238 calls in the 2016 summer season, or 130 total calls. Ocean City EMS responded to 2,622 calls in 2017 compared to 2,735 in 2016, while the number of fire calls dropped from 503 in 2016 to 486 this summer.
“Our call volume saw a modest decrease for the first time in four years,” he said. “There was a drastic decrease during the month of August, but there was an increase during June. The month of July pretty much held steady compared to last year.”
Perhaps the most important takeaway from Tuesday’s presentation was the steadily declining response times for both fire and EMS calls.
During the same report last year, Larmore told the Mayor and Council the response times for EMS calls had been reduced to an all-time low 3.89 minutes during the summer of 2016. This summer, the OCFD was able to reduce its response times for both fire and EMS calls even further. For example, the average response time for a fire call was 4.52 minutes, while the average response time for an EMS call was reduced to 3:56 minutes, or 33 seconds lower than last year’s record average.
“Having EMS calls averaging under four minutes is absolutely remarkable, especially considering the traffic conditions and weather conditions we often deal with in the summer,” he said. “We’re extremely proud of that.”
Often in the summer season, the OCFD relies on mutual aid from allied departments in the area during heavy call volume times. The OCFD typically maintains seven EMS units throughout the resort that can respond to seven different incidents at one time. Larmore said there were only seven occasions in the summer of 2017 when a staffed OCFD unit was not available, but no calls for service went unanswered. The chief explained shift supervisors can split crews to handle multiple incidents at the same time, the supervisors themselves respond to incidents in the field. On two occasions this summer, mutual aid departments were needed to handle EMS calls in town, once on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and once on the Saturday of the Air Show weekend.
“The goal is to never have a call that we don’t have a crew to respond to,” he said. “The other side of that is we carefully schedule and staff so we don’t have crews sitting idle at times. In 2017, not one call went unanswered. It’s pretty remarkable considering the traffic conditions and the number of calls. We’re very proud of that.”
The OCFD is a combination of paid staff and volunteers who work in partnership to provide fire coverage, emergency medical services and ambulance transport for the resort. In recent years, it has been reported that volunteer fire companies are feeling the impact of a reduction in the number of volunteers, particularly because of attrition. Older volunteers are leaving the service in many jurisdictions and there hasn’t been a corresponding influx of younger volunteers.
However, Larmore said on Tuesday the opposite is holding true in Ocean City with the volunteer department thriving. According to the report, the OCFD’s volunteer duty crew coverage in the summer of 2017 came in at 8,940 hours, down slightly from the 9,290 volunteer duty crew hours in 2016, but up considerably from the 8,208 volunteer duty crew hours in 2015.
Another big takeaway from Tuesday’s presentation was the OCFD’s success rates on high performance CPR incidents during the 2017 summer season. In terms of Return of Spontaneous Circulation (ROSC) calls, or those calls when victims experience sudden cardiac arrest, the OCFD success rate for revival was 38 percent, while the national average is just over 10 percent. Similarly, on Cerebral Performance Category (CPC) calls, which measure a cardiac arrest victim’s neurological function, the OCFD’s success rate was 25 percent, compared to the national average of just over eight percent.
“If you suffer full cardiac arrest in Ocean City, you have a 300 percent better chance of arriving at the hospital and returning home from the hospital then you would compared to the national average,” said Larmore. “That’s a remarkable feat. When I started many years ago, the success rate was around three percent. We’ve improved that every year and we’re very proud of that.”
