County fire department responds to 619 calls in 2025

The Linn County Rural Fire Department responded to an average of nearly 12 calls a week during 2025, according to county Fire Chief Randy Hegwald. (Journal file photo)

By Charlene Sims

lcjeditory@icloud.com

MOUND CITY – The Linn County Fire Chief Randy Hegwald reported on Monday, Jan. 5, that the county fire departments responded to 619 calls during 2025, or an average of nearly a dozen calls per week. He said it was the highest total since he was hired as fire chief in January 2022.

Hegwald cited those numbers during his weekly report to the Linn County Commission, and he went on request permission to give a more detailed breakdown on what kind of calls those were.

He also reported that there were 13 total calls for the week ending Saturday, Jan. 3, and that six of those calls had been during the first three days of 2026.

Hegwald gave the call summary breakdown from last week which was one structure fire, three wildland fires, six emergency medical services (EMS) assists, one vehicle fire, and one crash detection (however, no incident was found at that location) and then one follow-up on a prior fire with the insurance company. A crash detection can be triggered by an accident or even by a cell phone falling off a vehicle.

“I want to see what your thoughts are on getting with the newspaper and giving them a call breakdown from last year," he said, "just to kind of give everybody an overview of what the fire department did. Break down every fire, like how many structure fires, how many grass fires we had, and all that for the year. Make sure you guys were OK with putting those numbers in the newspaper.

Commission Chair Jim Johnson said he didn’t have a problem with it.

“I’ve been speaking with the sheriff late last week, and he’s been surplussing out some vehicles," the fire chief said. "He had a couple that did not sell. Next week I would like to bring that information about possibly a rural fire department person seeing one of those vehicles. It’s a pickup truck. I just did not get the information in time to get it to you guys this week. So, I’ll get that information, get an email sent out so that you guys have the information, possibly discuss it next week at the meeting.”

Johnson asked if the fire department was replacing one.

“We’re looking at adding it for emergency preparedness and medical response where it wouldn’t have any water in it," Hegwald answered. "So, during cold events we wouldn’t have that water freezing up. But that’d be kind of in the summary I send that out where it would go and what we’d use it for.”

American Medical Response (AMR) operations manager Dawn Brooks gave the report from Jan. 1 through Jan. 4, which showed there had been a total of 10 calls resulting in four transports.

The average response time was 14 minutes 25 seconds. The calls by city were:

• La Cygne, 2 calls, 1 transport

`• Linn Valley, 1 call, 0 transports

• Mound City, 2 calls, 2 transports

• Parker, 2 calls, 0 transports

• Pleasanton 2 calls, 1 transport

• Prescott, 1 call, 0 transports

Other cities in the Linn County AMR service area had no calls of transports.

Response numbers and times for this time period by Commission Districts are:

District 1 - 3 responses, 1 transport, 12 minutes 19 seconds average response time.

District 2 – 3 responses, 1 transport, 12 minutes 22 seconds average response time.

District 3 – 4 responses, 2 transports, 17 minutes 32 seconds average response time.