How does the Albuquerque Fire Department compare to other fire departments nationwide?

AFR crews battled fire at abandoned home in southeast Albuquerque on May 2, 2024 | Courtesy of Albuquerque Fire Department

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – How does the Albuquerque Fire Department (AFR) compare to other fire departments nationwide? It's one of the busiest, according to a new national report. KRQE News 13 spoke with AFR to find out how the city compares.

“This is the National Firehouse Inquiry. They do it every year, I think there’s about 200 departments that have participated,” said Lt. Jason Fejer, AFR public information officer. The survey just released its first set of numbers: statistics on the busiest fire departments in the United States.

“In 2022, the AFR ranked 16th overall in the country. In 2023, we got to number 20. So we are generally going in the right direction,” Fejer said. He said the department responded to 97,000 calls for service in 2023, a decrease from 2022, when they responded to more than 100,000.

Some areas of the city are busier than others: while AFR is the 20th busiest department overall, one of their engines based in the International Quarter is ranked in the top ten. “The guy behind me here is Engine 5 and so this year he came in seventh among participating departments in the country,” Fejer said.

To earn this title, Engine 5 makes 16 to 17 calls every 24 hours, with nearly 6,000 service calls in 2023. Fejer said that when an engine reaches the threshold of more than 3,500 calls per year, they start to think about how to convey the call. lower the volume. “We still have probably 9 or 10 trucks above that threshold, so we're looking at everything we can do,” Fejer said.

He said that citywide, the majority of their calls are medical: “It's about 88 percent emergency response versus 12 percent fire.” »

“Overall, we are trending downward in the right direction; A lot of that is because the Albuquerque ambulance takes sick calls and a lot of our unknown medical calls,” Fejer said.

He added that the ranking reflects the hard work of the AFR: “The other side of the coin is that it is hard for the crews; there are a lot of sleepless nights, the things these guys see frequently aren't always easy to deal with.

AFR hopes the addition of a dedicated outdoor fire truck last year will help improve its rankings next year.