Fresno County calls for service were up 140% on Fourth of July, compared to last year
Fresno County dispatchers received almost 10 times as many calls during the busiest hour on the Fourth of July than on a typical night, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said on Monday.
Fireworks seemed more on display than usual for anyone standing outside in the Fresno area on Saturday, and numbers from the Sheriff’s Office and city firefighters back that up.
Fresno County’s dispatchers answered 1,628 calls for service on Saturday, which is 140% greater than the same day last year, according to spokesperson Tony Botti. Six hundred of the calls came through 911.
The busiest hour, 9 p.m., saw 436 calls. A 9 p.m. hour on a typical Saturday draws 45 calls, Botti said.
The dispatchers also got 234 “fireworks, fire and public hazard” calls, he said. “One thing to note is that if, for example, five people called in a report for fireworks in one particular area that gets merged into one call,” he said. “So that is why the 234 number may seem lower than you would expect.”
Deputies wrote zero citations, Botti said.
Cities of Fresno, Clovis
Calls for service were also up in the city of Fresno, where the Fresno Fire Department said more than 200 calls for fires were triggered by fireworks. No injuries were reported.
A task force of representatives of the Fresno Police Department and Fresno Fire Department issued about a dozen citations for illegal fireworks on Saturday, according to Jay Tracy, a city of Fresno deputy fire marshal.
Many more tickets are likely to be issued in follow-up cases, according to Tracy. The night was especially filled with aerial fireworks, he said.
“I think it was one of the craziest nights I’ve been involved in,” he said. “It was insane.”
Why the night was so full of aerial fireworks remains unclear. Tracy said some combination of being cooped up during the COVID-19 pandemic, the holiday landing on a Saturday, the cancellation of commercial shows and people looking to display their freedom were all likely factors.
The department used a drone and will use the video to locate where illegal fireworks originated, and others can be investigated with the help of residents who filed reports, he said.
Clovis police responded to 518 calls on Saturday, which included 199 related to fireworks, according to department spokesperson Ty Wood. An average weeknight runs between 300 and 400 calls, he said.
No citations were written, Wood said, noting catching people is difficult. “You have to catch them in the act,” he said. “That’s the difficulty.”
911 calls
Fresno County’s dispatchers also handle calls for smaller municipalities, like Sanger and Kerman, and often have to reroute calls to other agencies, like Clovis Police Department and California Highway Patrol.
Another factor that keeps dispatchers busy is 911 callers who hang up, which on Saturday was 180, Botti said. Dispatchers are required to call each of those people back.
Botti said some people are under the impression if they hang up and call again they’ll get to a dispatcher quicker.
“Rarely do you get an automated message that puts you on hold with our dispatch center, but on nights like the Fourth of July it is bound to happen,” he said. “We ask the public to resist the urge to hang up. Stay on the line and wait for a dispatcher.”
This story was originally published July 6, 2020 at 12:07 PM.
