Palm Beach County Fire Rescue reports higher call volume and 6:40 average response time in Wellington

Palm Beach County Fire Rescue told the Village of Wellington council on April 8 that calls to the village rose in fiscal year 2024 and that the department maintained an average response time of 6 minutes, 40 seconds.

"In fiscal year 2024, we ran 267 more calls...for a total of 6,423 calls to the village. The average response time was 6 minutes and 40 seconds," the Palm Beach County Fire Rescue representative said during the council meeting.

The presenter said Wellington is served regionally and backed up by neighboring stations. The department listed the units assigned to Wellington as four engines, four rescues, three brush trucks, a battalion chief and an EMS captain, and described the countywide operations that support large incidents, technical rescue and specialized responses.

The report highlights several clinical and community programs: a whole-blood transfusion program that the department said it implemented to improve survival for bleeding trauma patients; a mobile integrated health (MIH) team that pairs paramedics with medical social workers to address patients’ nonmedical needs after 911 calls; and outreach such as pediatric and adult grief support, fall intervention, and addiction and pregnancy outreach. The department also described specialized training it has provided to other agencies, including whole-blood best practices taught to military units and other departments.

The presenter gave arrest and survival statistics for cardiac arrest countywide and noted local program results that exceed state averages. The department reported a countywide cardiac-arrest return-of-spontaneous-circulation rate of 26 percent (state average cited as 24.1 percent) and said 14.4 percent of countywide cardiac-arrest patients were discharged alive (the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival average cited as 9.7 percent).

Public comment and council remarks followed. Resident and fire-protection engineer Bruce Toomin asked whether the department has written standard operating procedures addressing access delays caused by hurricane shutters, noting that some Wellington residents leave shutters down for extended periods during storm season. Toomin also questioned how the village enforces the 100-foot audible standard in the noise code and suggested using decibel measurements for enforcement.

Council members and the mayor thanked Palm Beach County Fire Rescue for services and said they valued both the emergency response and community-education efforts described in the report. Several council members highlighted training, life-saving interventions and the department’s role in community events.

Clarifying details from the meeting include the department’s stated unit mix serving Wellington and program highlights; one numeric item in the transcript — a line that reads "Wellington had 303487 patients transported last year" — appears inconsistent with surrounding figures and may be a transcription error; the original annual report on the village website is the source for full numeric tables and should be consulted for precise transport counts.

The presentation and follow-up discussion did not produce new council directives or votes recorded in the meeting minutes; the report was presented for the council’s information and followed by questions and public comment.

The council expressed appreciation for the department’s response times and community programs and encouraged residents to review the full 41-page report on the village website for more detail.

The council moved on to other business after the public discussion.