The Chesterton Fire
Department responded to 94 calls in September, down 20 calls--or 16
percent--from the 112 to which it responded in August.
Of those 94 calls,
68--or 72 percent--were EMS runs of one kind or another. The CFD went on 60
EMS runs in August, by way of contrast, but in that busy month medical calls
accounted for only 54 percent of the department’s activity.
The CFD responded
to six actual fires in August, five of them minor: an overheated exhaust fan
smoked up a restroom facility at Liberty Intermediate School; a wall-mounted
heating unit malfunctioned at the Addison Pointe nursing home, causing an
electrical plug and outlet to melt; an interior wall of a garage in the 200
block of South Ninth Street sustained some damage in what the CFD said was
probably an electrical fire; the contents of a dumpster in the 300 block of
Broadway burned after being ignited, cause undetermined; and a vehicle
caught fire on I-94.
There was one other
blaze, a large one: an abandoned barn at 268E 1050N in Jackson Township was
set afire by a person or persons unknown. No one was injured and no
financial loss was incurred by the owner of the property, the Town of
Chesterton. The scene was in the Liberty Township Volunteer FD’s
jurisdiction and the CFD responded under a mutual-aid agreement.
The CFD also
investigated nine reports of smoke or fire, four reports of open burns,
three reports of natural-gas leaks, and one report of an arcing power line;
performed extrications at the scenes of three accidents; participated in the
search for a bicyclist who managed to lose himself in a wood in the Tremont
area of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore; and assisted the Portage FD at the
scene of a near drowning at West Beach, also in the National Lakeshore.
EMS Calls
Of the CFD’s 68 EMS
calls, 22 of them--or 33 percent--were for “Sick Person,” a catch-all
category used for non-specific medical calls. A person could be complaining
of a headache or dizziness or Chesterton Police could be asking the CFD to
respond to a scene to treat a patient with unknown symptoms.
Ten of the 68
calls--or 15 percent--were for “Falls,” another catch-call category used at
any scene in which the CFD is required to lift a person. The patient could
have fallen but he or she might also be recovering from surgery and simply
needs to be lifted from a prone position.
Seven calls were
for “Breathing Problems”; four each for ”Unconscious/Fainting,” “Traumatic
Injury,” and “Chest Pain”; three for “Convulsions/Seizures”; two each for
“Diabetic Problems” and “Hemorrhage/Laceration”; and one each for “Heart
Problem” and “Cardiac/Respiratory Arrest/Death.”