ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Rochester firefighters are stepping up to save lives, not just by fighting fires but by responding to medical emergencies across the city.
In 2025, the Rochester Fire Department tackled 420 structure fires and numerous rescue calls, including a recent incident where a person fell off the Charlotte Pier after the Polar Plunge. However, firefighting and rescue operations only make up about half of their daily duties.
Stefano Napolitano, Chief of the Rochester Fire Department, explains the division of their responsibilities: “Right now we’re at 49% emergency medical response and 51% fire and emergency rescue response.”
With nearly 42,000 calls for service in Rochester in 2025, firefighters are often the first responders to arrive on scene. “90 plus percent of our firefighters are emergency medical technicians as well as any new firefighter coming in as a condition of their employment have to be an emergency medical technician,” Chief Napolitano says.
The Rochester Fire Department typically arrives at a scene within 4 minutes. AMR, the city’s contracted ambulance service, is required to respond to priority 1 calls within 8 minutes and 59 seconds and has up to 17 minutes and 59 seconds for lower-priority calls.
“It’s a two-tier response system with AMR. We get on scene, start patient care stabilization. AMR gets there, we assist them, and then they’ll transport to the hospital. Sometimes they’ll take a firefighter or two on board depending on the nature of the call that they are dealing with,” Chef Napolitano says.
A few years ago, the city considered having the Rochester Fire Department take over ambulance services but decided against it due to the potential cost to taxpayers. Instead, they signed a new contract with AMR. At the time, Deputy Mayor Michael Burns told News10NBC the benefit of the contract was having the ability to sit at the table with AMR to understand what is going on with performance, what’s going well, what’s not going well and what they’re doing to address it.”
The city says those discussions continue today, to ensure effective emergency response.
The post Rochester firefighters are key in emergency medical response efforts appeared first on WHEC.com.
