ROCHELLE — The Rochelle Fire Department responded to 3,057 calls in 2024, RFD Chief Dave Sawlsville said Jan. 7. RFD responded to 3,129 calls in 2023 and that total number dropped by 72 calls in the year that followed. 

Sawlsville said he doesn’t believe the small drop in calls seen from 2023 to 2024 is significant enough to assign meaning to and is not a trend RFD expects to continue. After seeing calls rise for the past number of years, RFD recently expanded its staffing model. Its calls remained over 3,000 in 2024. 

“We're still extremely busy,” Sawlsville said “I don't think it signals anything. It's not a trend we expect to continue. If it had dropped 200 calls, that would be something. The number of overall calls we saw is still a very large number and a lot to deal with. Especially when you compare us to surrounding communities. Sycamore has more population, but we do more calls. Dixon City has a higher population, but we do more calls. A lot of that has to deal with our geographics. We're kind of an island. Dixon interacts with Dixon Rural and Sycamore interacts with DeKalb all the time. We're kind of on an island. Unless we specifically call for mutual aid, it's just us.”

In 2024, RFD saw 2,627 EMS calls and 430 fire-related calls. Sawlsville said that ratio did not change from past years and is typical for fire departments that handle EMS calls. 

RFD saw a jump in calls due to the COVID-19 pandemic back in 2020 and still sees calls for COVID-19 on occasion along with more recent illnesses that include norovirus, influenza A and RSV.

Rochelle Fire is also still seeing high numbers of mental health-related calls.

“We still do help a lot of psychiatric patients and we don't think that'll change for us,” Sawlsville said. “Rochelle doesn't have a lot of resources for that for emergent patients. Sinnissippi Centers does a great job for chronic mental health. For emergent mental health patients, we pick them up and take them to Rochelle Community Hospital and they do the best they can. Oftentimes, if the patient doesn't agree to be transferred to a psychiatric facility, oftentimes we just repeat that process. We're still seeing a high number compared to five years ago. Mental health calls are still pretty prevalent, a lot more than they used to be.”

Sawlsville said that numbers of “significant true house fires” have remained steady and no increase has been seen in houses that have sustained structural damage from fires. The number one cause of residential fires is still cooking, Sawlsville said.

Amid winter weather, the RFD chief said he anticipates seeing increased calls related to heating, such as people overworking furnaces and using supplemental heat sources such as fireplaces and space heaters. Sawlsville advised residents to give space heaters three feet of space around them to prevent fires.

Residents were also advised to have working smoke alarms due to an increase in petroleum-based materials in homes today. 

“When petroleum-based products burn, they burn very fast and hot and cause flames to spread quickly,” Sawlsville said. “Prevention is your best bet. Studies in the 1970s suggested you had 10 minutes to get out of a house that's on fire, and now you have less than two minutes. And the chemical makeup of that smoke now is so much more toxic than it was when it was simply wood, cotton and wool burning. Now everything is held together with petroleum products so when it goes, it goes fast and hot.”

Due to rising call numbers in recent years, RFD recently underwent an expansion that saw six total new firefighters hired. The newest three firefighters will be funded by a $919,368 Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant RFD recently received. Amid the expansion, RFD also established a new model that established the rank of captain, with the department seeking to have more safety during fire incidents and leadership during busier EMS operations. Each shift will now include a captain, a lieutenant and four firefighters.

“The National Fire Protection Association did a study recently and found that when firefighters get into a mayday situation in a fire, 71 percent of the time it's because the supervisor stayed outside of the structure and wasn't inside watching the firefighters' backs,” Sawlsville said. “Somebody has to stay with the crew and someone has to stay outside and direct incoming units and resources. That was a driving force behind the addition of the captain rank. Now the captain can stay outside and the lieutenant can go in with the crew. It will increase safety greatly.”

Sawlsville said that when looking at call numbers for a year, he feels better about RFD’s ability to handle them due to its new staffing model. He said that the new staffing model has been “a significant change,” and will be sustainable for RFD for  “a good, long time.”

In 2024, RFD also completed a dorm renovation that added separate sleeping spaces and two additional showers. The showers were added due to the importance of showering immediately after fires to prevent toxins from smoke from being absorbed through the skin. 

In 2025 Sawlsville expects to see slight changes in demographics in RFD’s service territory with the addition of two multi-family housing complexes with multiple stories on the south side of town, along with growing industry. 

“One is four stories of senior housing and that demographic relies on EMS more often,” Sawlsville said. “Right next to it will be three stories of workforce housing. More things are happening with industry in our area. More people working here means more potential people to use our EMS services. I don't anticipate our numbers in 2025 will fluctuate too much. We've never seen huge swings. The numbers usually increase slightly. It crept down slightly in 2024. In 2025 the numbers will probably bump up a little bit again.”