Information from Redmond first responders showed little change in fire and police activity over the last year.

The chiefs of the Redmond Fire and Police departments gave the city council an annual update for 2016 statistics at its meeting on Oct. 17.

Fire Chief Tommy Smith said the department measures success by how quickly it can respond to a call. The amount of time it takes for first responders to reach a victim translates directly to their chances of surviving and how much damage the victim will suffer.

To be in the 90th percentile of call responses, which is the department’s target, they must respond to urban, suburban and rural calls within six, eight and 10 minutes, respectively.

The fire department managed to respond to urban calls faster than the guidelines for suburban and rural calls, but came in around 36 seconds over on average for urban calls, meaning calls from within the city.

Medical aid calls account for 76 percent of all calls the fire department receives, Smith said, with the remaining being suppression calls.

When someone calls 911 requesting medical attention, both the fire department and ambulances respond.

Fire suppression calls don’t always involve structure fires, but are responses that require a fire truck, like commercial fire alarms.

Automatic fire alarms make up around 8 percent of annual calls, Smith said.

The department responded to around 1,200 medical emergencies last year within the city and did not include those where they render assistance outside of District 34.

In total, the fire department responds to around 11,000 calls annually both in and outside of the district.

Structure fire trends remained relatively steady between 2015 and 2016.

Brush fires were a different story, with 55 popping up in 2015 and dropping to 41 last year.

However, this increased in 2017 with a year-to-date total of around 70 brush fires.

Smith said this trend could continue as the climate predictions he is operating off of are predicting a drying cycle for up to the next seven years.

Redmond firefighters will continue training to make sure they know how to deal with the possibility of increasing brush fires.

“We want to make sure that our firefighters are equipped and trained to fight wild land firefightings,” he said.

His department also tracks heroin-related incidents Redmond units respond to.

There were 65 heroin-related incidents in 2016 and the overdose reversing drug Naloxone was administered 47 times last year.

So far this year, there have been around 25 uses of Naloxone, Smith said.

On local crime, Police Chief Kristi Wilson said Redmond has a significantly higher percentage of property crimes, at 84 percent of all reported, when compared to the 73 percent of all crimes statewide.

Redmond has a much lower rate of violent crime when compared with the state, at only around 8 percent of all crimes reported in Redmond being violent, compared with 20 percent in Washington.

There were around 50 incidents reported for every 1,000 people in the city, which is somewhat lower than what it was last year, even as the state figures continue to rise.

“Our incident numbers are staying relatively similar for the population,” she said.

Part of this is due to the police department’s efforts to prevent crime, Wilson said.

Programs like the Lock It Up campaign, which encourages people to lock their cars to prevent break-ins, as well as the Apartment and Block Watch programs help keep communities safe, she said.