Another ambulance and more paramedics needed to handle increased calls in Elgin

Elgin’s fire chief hopes adding a sixth full-time ambulance will help the city keep up with rising calls while decreasing its reliance on mutual aid.

Chief Robb Cagann made the case to reinstate the city’s sixth ambulance, which they cut in 2012, and add nine new firefighter/paramedics to their roster in the 2025 budget during last week’s council meeting.

Cagann said calls for service have increased by 40% since 2012, with more than 3/4 of those calls for emergency medical services.

“The need for that ambulance is significant just based on call volume alone,” Cagann said.

A second factor is the city’s reliance on mutual aid, which happens when all units are busy and calls are made to neighboring communities to bring in services like fire and EMS.

In 2023, Elgin received mutual aid ambulances 628 times while only responding to mutual aid calls in surrounding communities on 48 instances.

“We are by far the largest fire department in the area, and we rely daily on the departments surrounding us, all of which are smaller than us,” he said, adding that many of those departments have only one or two ambulances for their communities.

The city averages two mutual aid ambulances coming to town each day. However, Cagann said there are “plenty of days” where they get more because the city responds to as many as nine calls simultaneously.

“You can see the disparity in what we’re providing versus what we’re receiving,” he said. “We are giving far less mutual aid than we are receiving all the way back to 2012.”

The department already has an extra ambulance. So the request won’t require the purchase of a new vehicle.

The department also requested nine paramedics to staff the vehicle. Each ambulance is staffed with two paramedics per shift.

Six of the new paramedics are needed to operate the added ambulance. The other three would cover downtimes on the schedule, including vacation and personal time and sick or injured leave.

The ambulance will work out of Station 3 on Royal Boulevard near Randall Road. It will help with Elgin’s west side, where they frequently rely on mutual aid from Pingree Grove.

“Oftentimes they’re not available anymore because their call volume is going up, and they have reduced resources as well,” he said.

Council member Tish Powell said adding another ambulance was a long time coming.

“The call volumes you quoted are nothing short of astounding,” she said. “It’s needed. This is one of our core services that we provide to our community, and it’s a core service that we need to have our highly trained staff providing, not something we contract out.”