Statistics released at the Thursday afternoon, Feb. 12 Escalon Consolidated Fire Protection District board meeting showed that fire department personnel responded to a total of 1,149 incidents during the calendar year in 2025. While that shows a slight decrease from the 1,201 in 2024, Escalon Fire Chief Rick Mello said the department did set a new record for the highest volume of calls in a month during the year.

“We had 141 calls in December and that was a new record,” the chief said. “The old record for a month was 132.”

December was by far the busiest month of the year for the department and included in the calls were 105 medical aids, 12 motor vehicle accidents, four fires and 20 miscellaneous calls.

The slowest month was February, with 69 calls, with 46 of them medical, four motor vehicle accidents, two fires and 17 miscellaneous calls.

“The busiest month for fires was May,” said the chief, with 16 responses for fires that month, while the busiest month for motor vehicle accident responses was October, with 19.

Sixty-four percent of the calls the fire department ran in 2025 were for medical aid.

Mello said the breakdown of where the incidents were that the department responded to was very close to the 2024 calls.

“We responded to 632 incidents in the City of Escalon and 457 incidents in the rural area,” said the chief.

City incidents accounted for 55 percent of the call volume, the rural area calls accounted for 40 percent, with the remaining five percent – 60 calls – for automatic aid and mutual aid.

“We were on pace for a pretty slow year,” Mello said, but the busy December pushed them well over the 1,100-call mark. “We did have an unusually slow September, but I am not complaining.”

By month, the total calls for the Escalon Fire Department were: January, 93; February, 69; March, 86; April, 95; May, 109; June, 102; July, 103; August, 105; September, 82; October, 96; November, 92; and December, 141.

The department is still in the process of bringing a third Battalion Chief on board, with Ryan Burr and Cassidy Bohannon sharing duties as Acting Company Officer on the B shift, with Moe Silva the Battalion Chief on A shift and Joe Pelot, recently returning from leave, the Battalion Chief for the C shift.

Reserve firefighters are continuing to pick up shifts so the department maintains its minimal staff of two full-time personnel on each shift. Typically, Mello said, they are able to have three people per shift with the reserves helping round out the staffing level.

“Like most small departments, we do a lot with a little,” Mello said.