Protection & Rescue Zurich: over 40,000 missions in 2014.
Last year, the rescue service and fire department of Zurich Protection & Rescue together carried out over 40,000 operations. The operations control center received over 133,000 calls from the affiliated cantons (tel. 144 and 118), as reported.
The rescue service called out a total of 35,476 times in 2014, a slight increase on the previous year's figures (+3.4%). Around 74% of these calls took place in the city of Zurich (over 26,000). In 7% of all ambulance calls, an emergency physician was also called out. The number of emergency physician missions has increased in the city area, while they have tended to decrease in the rest of the region.
The fire department recorded over 4600 interventions (-2.3%) in the city of Zurich. The largest increase was registered in the area of "first responder" interventions with a total of 261 interventions (+97.7 %). In these emergency medical interventions, professional firefighters deploy for first aid or bring an emergency physician to the scene. The increased deployment of the "first responder" team has further improved rapid medical first aid, especially for resuscitations. The number of firefighters called out to deal with natural disasters (storms, water, etc.) and accidents in the city of Zurich fell by around a third (520).
The fire police of Schutz & Rettung work preventively and ensure that buildings in Zurich are fire-safe and have safe escape routes. Last year, the fire police carried out over 1200 building inspections. The fire protection experts also carried out a good 1,300 final inspections of new buildings or conversions.
The Schutz & Rettung operations control center handles fire department emergency calls (118) from all over the canton of Zurich as well as ambulance emergency calls (144) from the cantons of Schaffhausen, Schwyz, Zug (since 2.12.2014) and Zurich.
You can find more information on the Homepage of Protection & Rescue Zurich.
