Local fire departments see uptick in calls
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By TRAVIS MORSE
tmorse@morningsentinel.com
MOUNT VERNON — The Mount Vernon Fire Department and Jefferson Fire Protection District both responded to a record number of calls for service in 2025, with EMS and mutual aid being among the most prevalent types of calls for each agency.
Recently, the MVFD announced that it had completed 2025 with a total of 4,771 calls for service. This is a record number which beat out the prior year’s record of 4,418 calls for service.
Of the 4,771 calls, 204 of them were fires; 3,333 were EMS calls; and 321 were fire alarm calls. There were also calls pertaining to vehicle crashes, mutual aid, HAZMAT, and more.
“2025 was a good year. The cooperation between not just us and JFPD but the MABAS division as a whole has been great,” said MVFD Fire Chief Chris Yenne. “We’re really kind of hitting our stride in terms of the cooperation between the agencies in the surrounding counties.”
Yenne said his agency responded to four fires in the past year-and-a-half where, because of mutual aid and how agencies are working together, firefighters were able to rescue residents out of those homes.
“Some succumbed to their injuries later on (but) we were able to do that thing the public trusts us to do in those instances,” Yenne said.
In addition to mutual aid, another positive factor is that the MVFD has become a younger department. Before, the average age of a firefighter there was in the upper 30s and now it’s in the mid-20s, Yenne said.
“We’ve got a great bunch of young firefighters here,” Yenne said. “They love the job, they love the culture of the job, they’ve embraced it, and now that’s why they’re moving it forward. That’s what you want to see as a (fire chief). They’ve embraced the culture and they’re moving it forward.”
Jefferson Fire Protection District, meanwhile, also had a record year in 2025, responding to a total of 2,175 calls, an increase over the prior year’s total of 1,824 calls. Out of the 2,175 calls, 281 were mutual aid given to other departments, said JFPD Fire Chief Conan King. December of 2025 alone saw 198 total calls for the JFPD.
“For the past almost 13 years, we’ve seen a steady increase in calls,” said JFPD Assistant Fire Chief Ryan Clinton. “There’s only been two years (in that time span) where we didn’t set a record, and it was only about a 30-call margin that we missed either tying or breaking the record.”
Clinton was hired at JFPD in 2012, which was also the first year that the agency ran a total of 1,000 calls. He said that EMS calls and mutual aid calls are where the agency has seen the biggest increases.
“Every year, we see the number of medical calls increase,” Clinton said. “And the other big area is our mutual aid, providing mutual aid. We respond automatically with four other fire departments within the county, with calls from car wrecks all the way to building fires. … The EMS and the mutual aid is definitely where we’ve seen the numbers increase. (We’re) running automatic aid with Woodlawn, Waltonville, and Webber Fire (and) we respond auto aid for any car wreck.”
A few years ago, the JFPD changed its dispatch protocols. Now if their dispatcher gets a call about any working fire, the alarm gets bumped up so that all the area fire districts/departments are notified, Clinton said. This has resulted in all the area fire departments responding more frequently to building fires inside Jefferson County.
Collaboration and teamwork are key when it comes to the smaller rural fire departments, Clinton said.
“Everybody has a few people available and we all work together to get the job done,” Clinton said. “Us, along with all the other small rural fire departments, rely on each other pretty heavily and that’s where the mutual aid comes through with the MABAS organization.”
For more information, contact the Mount Vernon Fire Department or Jefferson Fire Protection District.
