Emmet County EMS reports 20% increase during July 4 holiday

EMMET COUNTY — Emmet County EMS was kept busy over the last two weeks with July 4 holiday crowds.

EMS Director Brian Patton reported to the Emmet County Board of Commissioners on Monday with statistics from June 29 through July 7.

“We were taking a look at our numbers for our staff just to show kind of what we did this year over the holiday season,” he said. “Of course, July 4 falling where it did we considered the weekend before and the weekend after that was busy, hopefully it was for our local businesses as well.”

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Over the two weeks, Patton said Emmet County EMS had 197 calls for service and transported 126 patients.

“We put 5,416 miles on our ambulances in that time period as well,” he said. “And overall, that’s up 20 percent from the same time period in 2023.”

Patton noted that where the Fourth of July fell this year, with high numbers of visitors over two consecutive weekends, likely led to the increase.

“While we might have 35,000-ish full-time residents, everybody that polls statistics says we can surge up to about 80,000-85,000 in overnight visitors at any one time in Emmet County, and I’m sure we reached pretty close to that in these last two weekends,” he said.

— Contact Jillian Fellows at jfellows@petoskeynews.com.