Norfolk Fire gives annual report for 2023

NORFOLK, Neb. -- The city of Norfolk received an update from its Fire Division.

Fire Chief Tim Wragge spoke before members of the city council to inform them of the division's work this past year.

Wragge said a trend of increased calls for service continued in 2023, with 3,217 calls being made.

It's an over 800 call increase from four years ago in 2019, which had 2,372 calls, and is the highest number of calls ever made in the station's history.

Wragge reports that the Fire Division has been able to keep up with the workload and has remained fully staffed most of the time.

However, he expects the division will need more firefighters in the future, as 2024 is already on track to break the number of calls set in 2023.

"I think that's sooner rather than later as far as the need to add folks," Wragge said. "Our team is tired if I'm being honest, they're tired. We'll do our best to deal with the call volume with what we have now, but eventually, we'll probably be talking about adding some firefighters."

Of the 2,217 calls Norfolk Fire received last year, 408 were for fires while the remaining 2809 were medical calls.