High River's Fire Chief recently brought town council up to date on the happenings at the fire hall.

Cody Zebedee says 2023 was a busy year.

"We hit 970 calls last year in 2023 and that's kind of a mixed bag, everything from (house) fires to vehicle fires to alarms, medicals, gas leaks, kind of the whole gambit of what we respond to."

Fire departments are the first line of response for many medical emergencies.

The province has taken steps to improve the situation.

Chief Zebedee says it's still a big part of what they do.

"Medicals are always a fairly large part of what we do, and I would say, for the most part, it stays fairly consistent between the years, obviously as the community grows we get more people, more people results in an uptick in calls as well so we didn't see a miraculous change between '22 and '23 number of responses at all so everything's stayed status quo from that perspective, he says.