By Adam Studzinski

BLOOMINGTON – The amount of emergency calls the Bloomington Fire Department received continues to climb.

Fire Chief Brian Mohr told the City Council Monday his department has seen an increase in call volume each of the past five years. He explained the department responded to 10,872 calls in 2015. That was an increase of 410 calls compared to the previous year.

“We’ve talked about NFPA 1710 and that six minute response time bench mark. Of course, you want to try to meet that 90 percent of the time,” said Mohr. “We made that 66.7 percent this last year, which is down from 67.1 the year before.”

Mohr added there is a need for another ambulance at the department’s headquarters near downtown. That unit is in use between 30 and 50 percent of the time a call comes in.

“That’s increased. We went up over 200 calls this last year,” said Mohr. “The reality to that is, you’ve got a unit that’s used 50 percent of the time, what does that mean? It means that you don’t have that unit available in that response district 50 percent of the time.”

Mohr said the fire department is understaffed as well. He said currently the departments is down six positions and after a retirement this summer they will be down seven.

Adam Studzinski can be reached at [email protected].