Brunswick Division of Fire surpasses 4,500 calls in 2025

BRUNSWICK — The Brunswick Division of Fire experienced another record number of calls in 2025 with 4,511 calls. The fire department received 4,133 calls in 2024 and 3,279 calls in 2020. "I think that honestly, a lot of these smaller suburbs throughout the state of Ohio and throughout the country, their services are taxed," Fire Chief Greg Glauner said. "We are very proactive. We're always considering the next response'." The majority of calls are medical, he said. The increase in calls over the past few years could be connected to the number of nursing home facilities in Brunswick, people having a longer lifespan and the loss of private ambulance companies during the pandemic. "A lot of times nursing homes will call for a private ambulance and find out it's a four-, five- or six-hour wait, and then, in turn, they'll call us, and we'll end up transporting," he said. "There's a question as to what a true emergency is, and it seems we get called out on a lot of things that probably aren't truly emergencies." The Brunswick Division of Fire is now operating out of its new station at 1094 Hadcock Road, which had its grand opening in November. The $12 million bond issue to build the new fire station passed in May 2023. "We're within a two-mile radius of almost all neighborhoods within the city," Glauner said. "That's definitely going to help us." Glauner believes the new station will help the fire department manage calls more effectively since all the department's resources are now under one roof. "If it's an incident, say, a medical call, or even a fire incident, wires down or something like that, and we feel we can handle it with less personnel, then we're going to send less personnel," he said. "Before, we had three firefighters at each station, so to keep one person back didn't make sense. Now we can hold individuals back and still have people available to respond to yet another alarm." Contact reporter Madisyn Woodring at (330) 721-4049 or mwoodring@medina-gazette.com.