By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — As of July 1, Lutheran EMS has increased some of its coverage in the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory, Lutheran EMS Education Coordinator Mark Pepple told the territory board Tuesday, July 2.

A truck in Warsaw went from an eight-hour to a 12-hour shift.

“You’ll see in your report one of the reasons that we did that is just because of the coverage in the timeframe. Our increase in run volume starts around — 1 o’clock is our high and then it starts staying stagnant or level about that timeframe, so trying to get a little better coverage through the evening time is really what we’re going for,” Pepple stated.

In the fire territory, 92.7% of the Lutheran EMS run were out of Warsaw fire station 3 and the Warsaw east station, he reported.

“I would think that’s a pretty good percentage there, meaning that we had trucks there, staffed, ready to go, responding in a close manner through that time frame. They weren’t coming in from different locations to do that,” Pepple said.

Common Councilman Mike Klondaris asked what hours were included in the coverage increase. Pepple said they had a truck that was staffed from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., but now it’s staffed from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. as of July 1.

Pepple also reported that an EMT class just finished with 18 students, nine passing so far. Two are already employed through Lutheran EMS.

An EMR class starts next week in Warsaw, with another one in Peru.

Over the last month, they also taught about 240 kids CPR at the high school.

Lutheran EMS had 502 total encounters in May, up from 418 in April; 455 in March; 426 in February; and 456 in January. Total number of transports also increased from 336 in April to 428 in May, he reported.

“I would imagine this month is going to be about the same, or a little bit more,” Pepple said, adding that he was proud “our dispatch to on-scene times went down through that timeframe. So we went down to 4.5 minutes.”

In April, that was 5.08 minutes.

Fire Chief Joel Shilling gave his monthly report for May. The fire territory had 303 responses, with 103 of those incidents overlapping (34%).

He said they had a few fires they responded to; gave some mutual aid to Leesburg and Milford fire departments, though they were cancelled for the Leesburg fire and spent a significant amount of time at Milford on a technical rescue; and received mutual aid from three different departments at three different locations. Winona Lake responded to all three with Atwood and Leesburg responded to one each.

Total calls for each station were 131 for station 17, 106 for station 13, 35 for station 15 and 38 for Community Assistance Resources & Emergency Services.

The department had 1,049.25 training hours in May. Shilling said they did a vehicle and machinery extrication technician and operation class for members of the department.

“That was the first time we’ve held this class in 10 years, so we had a lot of people go through that,” Shilling said. “On top of that, we worked on our EMS skills. We had someone go through fire investigation training. And then just our normal operations training that we did.”

As the 2023-24 school year wound down, he said they presented their Learn Not To Burn program that they do for all Warsaw Community Schools. They had 25 total hours in May for public education.

C.A.R.E.S. Director Chris Fancil, in his report for June, said they 52 in-person interactions and 33 phone calls.

“People are utilizing that C.A.R.E.S. number a lot more, so we’re able to give them some assistance by phone. So, overall, we had 85 interactions, either in-person or on the phone,” he said.

The in-person interactions are the ones the C.A.R.E.S. team actually does reports on. The phone calls are not included in the monthly reports, so when Shilling reported there were 38 calls in May for C.A.R.E.S., that number does not include phone calls, just in-person visits.

Fancil said in June the C.A.R.E.S. team did a lot of long-term housing assistance, trying to get folks into a good situation with their housing; and emergency shelter was a big one.

“Mental health navigation just keeps going up. We’re spending a lot of time trying to help people get to resources so that maybe they can get out of a crisis or a mental health issue,” he said. “The ladies are constantly busy.”

Referrals in June included six from the WWFT, four from the Warsaw Police Department and one from the Winona Lake Police Department.

“I think it’s a great program and it seems to have a really good impact,” Fancil concluded.

Shilling later reported that a retirement party for Lt. Travis Rowland, honoring his 30 years of service, is scheduled for 4-6 p.m. Friday, July 12 at fire station 15, 620 W. 200S, Warsaw.