A Slight Summer Slowdown, but Not a Trend for KAA

By Clark Judge

(January 23, 2025) — As expected, when the Killingworth Ambulance Association reviewed its records for 2024, the number of emergency calls from the previous year declined – dropping from 574 to 532, its lowest total in three years. However, within those figures something unexpected was detected. Calls fell in only one phase of the calendar year.

The summer.

Normally, you might suspect that season to be one with the most activity … and in July, 2023, it was. The KAA answered 64 emergency calls then, the highest one-month total in its history. But all that changed with the new year.

Where there were 179 ambulance runs from June through August, 2023, the number dropped to 120 the following year – including two noteworthy developments. First, the number of calls in June tailed off dramatically, from 57 in 2023 to 27, or half that figure, one year later. Second, the 179 calls from June through August in 2023 represented the year’s highest activity for three consecutive months. By contrast, the 120 runs over the same period one year later were the lowest of 2024. Furthermore, the 56 calls in June and July were the fewest for those two months since 2020 when there were 52.

Lazy-hazy-crazy days, indeed.

What does it all mean? Good question. When KAA president Dan O’Sullivan was asked, he admitted that he wasn’t sure – saying it may be nothing more than an aberration. And he should know. O’Sullivan answered more calls last year than any EMT, the fourth consecutive year he was the KAA’s leading responder.

“Nothing really explains that pattern,” he said. “Summer may be the busiest with motor-vehicle accidents, but we get a lot of calls for things other than trauma, such as falls or illness. When I looked at the number, my read was that we’re down some for the year. But then looking at the last several months, we were at least as high as normal … or a little higher.”

He’s right about that.

Calls each month from September through September were up, from a plus-seven in September to a plus-three in November. In all, the KAA made 21 more calls during that period than in 2023, a trend consistent with previous years.

“So, I don’t take this as a downward trend,” said O’Sullivan, “though that would be nice.”

Dating back to 2019, calls increased annually from 355 then to a KAA high of 574 in 2023, with the largest jump from 2020 to 2021. Where there were 367 calls one year, there were 496 the next – a 35% leap that represents the biggest hike the past twelve years. But that trend ended in 2024, only the third time (2017-18 were the others) that calls declined from the previous year.

Photo by Clark Judge

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