By Clark Judge
(February 11, 2026) — For the fourth consecutive year, the Killingworth Ambulance Association answered more than 500 calls in 2025 when it responded to 522. In other words, EMTs were busy. But full disclosure: They weren’t as busy as they have been. For the second straight year, emergency runs declined from the previous twelve months.
Unusual? Well, yes.
According to data collected by the KAA, responses accelerated each year from 2018 through 2023 when the KAA set a record with 574, or an average of 47.8 calls per month. But then the numbers descended, first to 532 in 2024 then to 522 — or an average of 43.5 per month — last year. Granted, that’s not much of a descent, but it does reverse a trend that had annual numbers accelerate so rapidly that they rose from 272 in 2018 to 574 five years later — a leap of 111 percent.
“I don’t think it’s anything significant,” said KAA president Dan O’Sullivan, who annually is one of the top responders. “The numbers aren’t a lot lower. There just seems to be an ebb and a flow to them.”
Nowhere is that more apparent than once you go inside the numbers. For instance, from June through August last year, the KAA responded to 146 calls — a significant increase from 120 in 2024. But then you look at March through May in 2025, and the calls dropped from 113 in 2024 to 102 one year later. Okay, so the decline again is incidental, but not when you compare it to the 137 in 2023.
That said, EMTs have been more active than ever recently. Over the past four years, they averaged 545 calls per annum. Over the previous nine years (2013-21), that figure was 349, with only one year (2021) where calls exceeded 383.
Curiously, an overview of the KAA’s call sheets from 2013-25 reveals a remarkable consistency at the end of each year. In November and December, for instance, the KAA answered 97 calls in 2025, a slight decline from the 102 responses in 2024. But there’s little variation in those two months over the past five years, with 104 (2022) the high and 90 (2021) the low. Over the past five years, EMTs were summoned an average of 97.4 times in November and December.
Furthermore, the KAA’s data from 2013-25 reveals December as the most active month (with 502 responses) and April (356) as the least active.
