70 percent of the calls of service the Monmouth Fire Department responds to are medically related. In general, with an increase of calls lately and many happening simultaneously, Fire Chief Casey Rexroat explains the importance of relying on surrounding volunteer firefighters to respond when needed:
“We rely heavily on our volunteers in the area because we are the only career department in the county and when we have something big going on, we call all these other departments around us for assistance, and vice versa they call us when they need help. It is very important to have those volunteers and bolster those departments to make sure they have the number of people to be able to go and put a fire out safely. The National Fire Protection Association, NFPA, I know it’s not the most ideal for everybody, but they talk about having 17 firefighters is the best number to respond to a structure fire, we have 16 people at our department, so we have to call the other departments in.”
The Monmouth Fire Department has responded to over 1,200 calls of service this year.
