The Rochelle Fire Department saw an increase in total emergency calls in 2025, RFD Chief Dave Sawlsville said Jan. 2.

In 2025, RFD saw 3,218 total calls with 2,876 EMS calls and 342 fire calls. In 2024, it saw 3,059 total calls, with 2,695 EMS and 364 fire-related calls.

The department has seen total calls rise consistently over the years, only with exceptions in 2024 and 2020. In recent years the city council approved an increase in firefighter/paramedic staffing to keep up with rising call numbers.

“As we anticipated, numbers continued to go up. But not drastically,” Sawlsville said. “That’s just the trend we’ve seen for decades. By any standard, there’s no indication that numbers won’t continue to increase year after year. What does change is the reason for EMS calls. Fire calls remained steady and nationwide, fire calls continue to trend down a little bit every year.”

RFD has seen less cardiac-related calls in recent years, but has seen an uptick in behavioral health calls, Sawlsville said. The RFD chief expects to see an increase in influenza A calls in the coming months, along with more behavioral health calls.

Rochelle Community Hospital recently opened a behavioral health services department due to the amount of need it’s seen in the community. Sawlsville said he hopes that helps with the issue and that RFD relies on RCH and Sinnissippi Centers “on a 24-hour basis” for mental health calls it sees.

The EMS industry is seeing an effort to get out in front of the increase in mental health calls, Sawlsville said. All RFD paramedics are licensed through the Illinois Department of Public Health for mental health response.

“One of the new continuing education requirements is to do a training segment on dementia and Alzheimer’s to be more familiar with those things and be able to recognize and intervene,” Sawlsville said. “We’re not with these patients long enough to have long-lasting effects and we don’t diagnose them. We assess, treat and transport. With a lot of behavioral health issues, they’re long-term. Being able to recognize and differentiate mental health from a physical ailment is important.”

With call numbers rising nearly each year, Sawlsville said there are a number of theories as to why that is, including an aging population, difficulty of getting in to see a doctor, less people having primary care physicians, and transportation difficulties.

Changes at RFD in recent years have included a staffing expansion that saw six total new full-time firefighters hired, adding the rank of captain, a new joint fire training facility with the Ogle-Lee Fire Protection District, and a dorm expansion at the fire station. Sawlsville said those changes give him more peace of mind amid rising call numbers.

Before the staffing expansion, RFD relied more on off-duty and paid on-call personnel when multiple calls would come in at once. A shortage of paid on-call and volunteer firefighters has been seen in recent years.

“One of our previous fire chiefs used to say that the ability to handle second and third simultaneous calls was what kept him up at night,” Sawlsville said. “And that’s a pretty regular occurrence now. With added staff, the ability to get multiple vehicles out the door simultaneously cannot be understated. And neither can our appreciation for it. That’s huge for our population.”

The RFD chief said the additional staffing has allowed for more proactive work in the community, such as fire personnel getting out to buildings and businesses in the community to evaluate their needs and approach if a fire or emergency were to ever take place there. Training is done at the new fire training facility each day, he said, and that progress has shown at fire calls.

Sawlsville called seeing so much change at RFD in recent years “remarkable.” The longtime chief thanked outgoing City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh for his support of the changes and the city council for putting them into place.

“The changes have come fast and furious,” Sawlsville said. “The people here have taken it in stride with all of the new hires and we recently started sending our new hires off to an academy and they come back with a uniform way of doing things and that’s brought about positive change with our people here. A tremendous amount of training has taken place for our new hires. The day they get sworn in is just the start. We have a great crew. And with our training facility they can hone their skills every day. That’s huge.”

In 2026, Sawlsville expects EMS calls to continue to rise, and that fire calls will remain “relatively constant” and make up 10-20% of what RFD does. He expects more training for RFD personnel and will continue to seek more paid on-call personnel, a shortage which he hopes will subside.

“For a while, it was hard to find people to even test for full-time positions after the pandemic,” Sawlsville said. “That has started to get better and we have a close place to send them to get trained. Hopefully that will bolster our paid on-call numbers and help when we have full-time openings. We want to grow our own pool of potential employees.”