The number of calls the Sublette Fire Department handled in 2025 saw an almost 50% increase over 2024.

That steep upward growth continues a trend that started about a decade ago and has not abated, according to Nick Dinges, assistant fire chief at the Sublette Fire Department. Kevin Schultz is the fire chief.

“This was a record year for us, we ran 265 emergency incidents. We did 181 calls in 2024. We were doing a little over 100 calls over a decade ago. The last few years, that has been significantly more,” Dinges said.

In 2025, Sublette volunteers handled 170 ambulance calls, 59 fire calls and 39 vehicle accident calls.

For the 30 volunteers on the department, that adds up to thousands of hours of service.

“The number of hours we put in as volunteers in 2025 was over 6,000 hours, between calls and training, so we averaged around 200 hours per person last year,” Dinges said.

One of the contributors is an increase in mutual-aid responses to neighboring departments, many of them volunteer departments like Sublette.

“We are being relied upon for mutual aid, especially on the EMS side. Amboy is partially staffing, which is great, they help us a lot and the same thing with Mendota. If they get three ambulance calls, we are their back-up ambulance so we are heading south quite a bit, more than we really ever have,” Dinges said.

Another factor fueling the hike is an increase in the area that Sublette’s EMS serves.

“Our district covers the village of Sublette and Woodhaven and we also provide EMS services to West Brooklyn and part of Ohio’s fire district. That has contributed to a few more calls,” Dinges said. Woodhaven is Woodhaven Lakes, a 6,000-lot, privately owned resort campground located between Amboy and Sublette.

Sublette Fire Department’s fire district covers about 68 square miles but with ambulance service, the district area is closer to 80 square miles. Sublette Fire Department also has an automatic mutual-aid agreement with the Amboy Fire Department. That pushes the area that the department can potentially cover out to around 200 square miles, from Harmon on the west side of the district almost to Illinois Route 251 on the east side.

Dinges said the increase in mutual-aid calls among rural departments highlights the advantages and challenges faced by those departments.

On the plus side, the mutual aid highlights the willingness of fire departments and EMS volunteers to help their neighbors and their neighboring departments.

“We are lucky in Sublette. People show up. The mutual aid we get from our neighbors like Amboy and Mendota, West Brooklyn, Compton, these guys and gals really are helpful. We are all in this to help our neighbors and I think that’s what we all go to bed at night thinking about, how do we take care of our family, friends and neighbors and do the best we can with the resources we have available?” Dinges said.

It also reflects a continuing and growing problem for fire departments and EMS services, especially rural, volunteer agencies - declining membership.

“Mutual aid is becoming relied upon more with all of these small fire departments because the volunteerism has been down. EMS services are really, really hard to keep going because the calls keep going up and the training requirements keep going up. It’s very, very difficult in these little towns to keep EMS and fire services as volunteers,” Dinges said.