VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The Virginia Beach Fire Department recently published its FY23 Annual Report.
In the report, officials said they increased the department's budget compared to 2022, which helped increase salaries from $45,511,811 to $48,360,849. This is part of an incentive to help fill vacancies and new roles throughout the department.
The department added different types of technology, including the unmanned aerial system, or drone, program. The drones allow the department to fly over scenes to find any hotspots that need to be targeted in a fire.
Officials said they also added more jet skis to help with their marine response.
"Having that ability to improve our marine response, including the jet ski response, helps us get to swimmers in distress and it makes all of that better," said Battalion Chief Kyle Bosiljevac who has worked with the department for 17 years.
Bosiljevac said the department now has 22 stations after adding the "Burton Station" on Tolliver Road near Northampton Boulevard, which is near where a fire took place just days after it opened.
Bosiljevac said they opened this new station and recruited more people to the teams to help in response times in that area, which so far, he said has proven to work, as evidenced by their quick response to the home fire. He said the average response time for VBFD's units are four minutes, which is a goal they are continuously working on to improve.
"From the time the truck leaves the station, we want to be there in four minutes," Bosiljevac said. "Our standards for National Fire Protection Association are a four-person minimum staffing on all of our trucks. We strive to do that for many, many years and we continue to do that one step at a time."
The report also stated a majority of the department's responses in 2023 were related to EMS and only a slim margin included calls for fire rescues, despite a busy summer tackling fires at homes and businesses.
"60 to 70% of our calls are EMS incidents. We have over 500 members of our department and every sworn personnel is at least an EMT," Bosiljevac said. "Our Oceanfront station, Station 11, was the busy station response-wise for our department this past fiscal year."
Bosiljevac says their big task now is preparing the community to check their heaters and fireplaces to avoid any hazardous situations during the winter season.