By Winthrop Rodgers
Contributing Writer

The Longwood Fire Station is a busy place. While sitting with the Chester County Press for an interview, Fire Chief A.J. McCarthy’s phone buzzes with a notification and interrupts his flow. Firefighter Gabby Ratliff’s phone does too at the next desk. They both look up at the big monitor in the office. A new call has come in.

It is one of the hundreds of fire and EMS responses that the three fire stations around Kennett Square respond to each month. And that call volume is steadily increasing, putting pressure on local departments and their resources.

“We are an all-hazards organization,” McCarthy explained. “We handle fire incidents. We are involved in rescue incidents. We provide all levels of emergency medical service that you can do pre-hospital.”

All of that adds up. In 2017, the three fire departments at Longwood, Kennett, and Po-Mar-Lin collectively responded to 1,167 fire calls and 3,327 EMS calls.

There was a noticeable uptick in the years after the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, for example, there were 1,292 fire and 3,722 EMS calls. The fire companies were on a pace in 2025 to reach even higher totals of calls, and McCarthy expects this trend to continue into the future.

There are similar trends at nearby fire companies. At West Grove, for example, fire calls increased from 665 in 2017 to 863 last year, while its EMS load grew from 2,394 to 3,663.

Combined fire and EMS calls increased nationwide by 22 percent between 2017 and 2023, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

“I don't know of any fire companies that are going backwards. I think everybody's getting an increase,” Guy Swift, Avondale’s fire chief, said in an interview.

Yet, questions remain about what is driving this trend.

“We've been trying to pinpoint it to one single thing, and we don't think it's one single thing. We think it's a combination,” McCarthy said.

However, the main reason for the increase in calls is likely population growth. Between 2020 and 2024, Chester County added more than 26,000 people, the largest increase of any county in Pennsylvania.

McCarthy rattles off a list of recently opened and planned developments in the catchment of his firehouses, each of which adds to the stretched attention of firefighters and medics.

He wants to see more consultation between municipalities and public safety services when developments are proposed. That would help the company to plan for the future needs in terms of equipment and staffing.

“We try to talk to municipalities…to know those things are coming,” McCarthy said. “Everything requires money, so you have to start that process.”

Beyond sheer population growth, other demographic factors may be at play as well.

“Older populations typically use the services more than younger ones for the most part,” he explained. The senior residential communities in the area typically require dozens of call outs by the EMS services each month, according to publicly available statistics.

In a similar vein, Swift noted the presence of a large rehab facility in his catchment area, which he said influenced the number of EMS calls they get.

There are also lower-income parts of the community where people do not have health insurance and rely more heavily on the emergency services to receive medical care.

Beyond what full-time residents need, the area around Kennett Square is a tourist hot spot. It brings in people from around the region for the annual Mushroom Festival, concerts, sporting events, and Third Thursdays on State Street.

Tubing on the Brandywine River in the summer has become another source of call outs. In fact, it is such a factor that some of the regional fire companies now have rescue boats, with others planning to buy more in the coming years.

The crowds at Longwood Gardens also require assistance from time to time. Luckily, the Longwood Fire Company is right next door, so it can fulfill Pierre DuPont’s original mission when he established it in 1921 to protect the gardens.

“If you sat down and mapped all those factors together, at the end, you’d get a busy fire department,” McCarthy explained.

Anecdotally, there may be a more intangible explanation at play as well.

“I just think people stopped putting stuff off,” McCarthy said, trying to explain the statistical rise in calls after the COVID-19 pandemic. People were forced to stay at home for long periods. Now they are out and more active, which requires more responses from the fire services. 

“There’s no scientific thing to point to, it’s just people decided: ‘I'm not waiting anymore,’” he added.

All of this puts pressure on the limited resources of the fire companies and EMS technicians, who must respond to the growing number of calls with the staff and equipment that they have at hand. 

“Everybody’s in the same boat,” Swift said. “When people dial 9-1-1, they want a fire truck or an ambulance there within a reasonable amount of time with a staff crew. They’re calling because they have the problem.”