HOWLAND — The year 2025 was another busy one for the fire department, as residents and officials learned from the township’s fire chief.

As part of his department head report last week, fire Chief Raymond Pace reported the department set another record for what he deemed “the busiest year ever,” running a total of 4,207 calls — 417 fire, 2,973 EMS, 233 rescue and 584 miscellaneous calls.

“That is an increase of 87 calls from last year, so we will still remain as the busiest fire department in Trumbull County that runs EMS,” Pace said.

Tony Merolla, a resident, asked Pace during public comment if the call volume strained resources for the department.

“I don’t believe it strained our resources; out of those numbers, we received mutual aid 52 times out of 4,207 calls,” Pace said. “Which is a very small portion compared to — we gave mutual aid a lot more than that — I don’t remember the number off the top of my head, but I remember we received mutual aid 52 times.”

Pace explained that mutual aid doesn’t necessarily come because of an ambulance call, noting that it could also come because of a house fire or the fatal plane crash in June that killed six.

“Our growth has been pretty steady. We’ve only had one year where we went down a couple, down 50 or 60 runs,” Pace said. “For the most part, we’re always on an upward curve, but we do need to look at, obviously, growing our fire department as our call volume continues to grow to adapt to our community.”

Trustee James LaPolla said it was amazing that the department’s call volume was increasing without Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital, which closed in March — pointing out that EMS would run a lot of calls to and from the hospital.

“That’s actually a great point — I ran numbers on that when Hillside closed, on average we took 130 transports out of Hillside a year,” Pace said.