Chief Dallas Tinley, spokesman for the Prince Edward County Area Firefighters Association and Darlington Heights Volunteer Fire Department delivered his annual report regarding the fire departments.

“Last year we responded to 905 fire calls, 846 rescue calls. This is an increase of 139 rescue calls over our previous year,” Tinsley said. “Of these 3,846 rescue calls, Prince Edward Volunteer Rescue responded to 3,242 of those in Prince Edward County.”

He said in addition to emergency calls there are also countless nonemergency responses that are not included in the figures.

“These responses are just to help citizens with nonemergency activities such as checking or replacing smoke detectors,” Tinsley said. “If these numbers aren’t enough let’s just take one day out of our volunteers’ life.”

Tinsley described the wind storm of March 1.

“During the 16 hours of that episode the fire departments responded to 40 calls for trees down across roads and power lines, eight transformer fires or related incidents, three brush fires and one structure fire,” Tinsley said. “We’re all volunteers so it takes a lot of time … These numbers are just to document that the money allotted to the fire departments is well spent and the citizens of prince edward county are receiving a good amount of service.”

Brian Butler, president of the Prince Edward County Volunteer Rescue Squad, said in 2017 the squad transported 2,502 patients.