Fires set by squatters, medical calls from the downtown Seattle business district, even overdoses inside homeless camps and treatment centers. For the nearly 1,000 Seattle firefighters, a normal day can be spent chasing 911 calls in any of these places.
911 callers requesting help from the Seattle Fire Department have soared over the last five years. On Wednesday, Chief Harold Scoggins told the City Council they're searching for a way to bring awareness to the fact that their 911 call load has grown by 15,000 calls per year since 2011.
"What we know is our call volumes are continuing to rise," Scoggins told the Council. "We have hot spots, high utilizer individuals and high utilizer facilities that we're going to be looking at addressing in the future."
Many calls of the 911 calls are to assist familiar faces at well-known places.