Hunters Ambulance and Meriden Fire report steady response times, rising calls and equipment needs

Hunters Ambulance and the Meriden Fire Department presented operational reports to the Public Safety Committee on Oct. 1, outlining call volume trends, response-time performance, staffing and equipment needs.

Dave Di Loreto, operations supervisor for Hunters Ambulance, told the committee Hunters responded to roughly 825 Priority 1 calls in Q2 and achieved its ~9-minute response-time objective about 99.8% of the time; Priority 2 (non‑lights/sirens) responses averaged about 430 calls and nearly met the organization’s <15-minute target (about 99.9%). Hunters reported about 2,430 patient transports and 516 no‑transports/refusals in the quarter. Di Loreto also detailed overdose response metrics: 38 requests for Narcan in Q2 (9 in April, 11 in May, 18 in June), 35 patients alive at scene and three deceased; three patients were repeated overdose contacts.

Councilors asked Hunters to break out responses by individual schools and to add a call category for gunshot or firearm-related assaults; Di Loreto said school psychiatric calls account for roughly half of pediatric psychiatric responses and agreed to provide per‑school counts and destination-hospital data at the next presentation.

Fire Chief Christine Shook briefed the committee on the department’s quarter-3 operations: the department recorded about 2,800 calls in the quarter and just over 8,000 year-to-date, putting Meriden on track for roughly 11,500 calls in 2025. The chief said the department aims to have the first arriving engine within four minutes and meets that goal about 90% of the time. Turnout (station-departure) times average about 1 minute 30 seconds to 2 minutes 20 seconds.

Shook described staffing and apparatus status: the department is authorized for 104 positions and has 96 on the line (94 actively responding), with 11 hires in the reporting period and two recruits in the academy due to graduate in December. She identified Engine 3 and Engine 5 as candidates for replacement (Engine 5 already on order, with typical lead times of two to three years) and said the department uses refurbished older vehicles and spares (engines 6–8) to maintain coverage.

The chief flagged operational challenges from electric-vehicle fires and consumer battery charging (reignition and toxic runoff risks) and described training: 356 training hours in the quarter and new joint active-shooter training with police. She also described three recent grant efforts: two FEMA grants (including a $45,000 request for a UTV), a Fire Prevention and Safety grant for firefighter safety training, and a Dennis Leary Firefighter Foundation request for thermal imagers; the department has submitted a ChemTREC request for gas-detection meters.

Councilors pressed the chief on station spacing and past studies; Shook said multiple city-funded studies (including a Dynamics study in 2024) analyzed station locations and that prior analyses considered closures and recommended, at times, additional stations. Councilors raised whether the city could save money by moving transport responsibilities in-house (a single department model used in nearby Wallingford); Shook warned that creating a municipal transport service would require large upfront staffing, training and equipment investments and said she did not have the break‑even numbers on hand. The chief also said the city historically chose not to bill residents directly for rescues and that billing practices vary by community.

Next steps: Councilors asked Hunters to provide school-level response statistics and requested that the chief share the station-coverage mapping and earlier study results at a future meeting. The committee did not vote on substantive policy changes on Oct. 1.