Record tourism keeps Jackson Hole Fire/EMS running at full throttle

Posted 9/30/21

JACKSON (WNE) — Record visitor numbers drove Jackson Hole Fire/EMS to its limits this summer as the department saw its busiest summer on record.

Chief Brady Hansen said he’ll be …

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Record tourism keeps Jackson Hole Fire/EMS running at full throttle

Posted

JACKSON (WNE) — Record visitor numbers drove Jackson Hole Fire/EMS to its limits this summer as the department saw its busiest summer on record.

Chief Brady Hansen said he’ll be requesting more staff to help Fire/EMS crews handle the tide.

“We got by just barely,” Hansen told the Jackson Hole News&Guide, reflecting on the summer. “I think the most accurate way for me is to say we ran the summer with RPMs well in the red.”

In July, Hansen said, his department received 35% more calls than it handled in July 2020 — which until the summer of 2021 had been the department’s busiest month ever. June and August tracked similarly, with roughly 30% increases in call volumes compared to the same months in 2020. While September hasn’t finished, Hansen said early data points to a roughly 20% increase over September 2020.

“Normally in our industry, a 5% increase is a lot,” Hansen said. “A 10% increase is unheard of. To hear a 35% increase is huge.”

The Fire/EMS chief attributed some of the spike in call volume to the COVID-19 pandemic. But Hansen also underscored that, while the virus is stressing the healthcare system, it’s not what’s pushing service calls to new heights. That, Hansen said, is the summer’s record-breaking tourism.

“It wasn’t that we had our normal call volume plus COVID,” he said. “It was an increase in visitation.”

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