More than one in five calls the Owen Sound fire department responded to in 2022 were false alarms.
That’s according to an annual report on the city’s fire service. In all, the Owen Sound fire department responded to more than 830 calls.
About 35 per cent of those were for medical assists. And more than 22 per cent were false fire calls.
Firefighters were also dispatched to 89 rescue calls, and 20 actual fires.
A summary provided in the report says 11 of the 20 blazes city firefighters attended last year were extinguished by on-duty staff. Seven required a “second alarm page” for on-call firefighters to attend, and three were “third alarm” for all available off-duty staff to report to scene.
Two of the 20 fires battled in the past year required mutual aid assistance from another fire department.
More than 25 per cent of the fires responded to last year were due to cooking. The busiest hour for firefighter response was between 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., with 65 calls.