ANDERSON COUNTY, Tenn. (WVLT) – The Andersonville Volunteer Fire Department set a new record for emergency responses in 2009.

AVFD Chief Jeff Bagwell announced the statistics in a news release on Wednesday morning. According to the chief, AVFD responded to 809 calls last year. 470 of those calls were for medical emergencies or motor vehicle accidents. 106 calls were false alarms or “good intent calls”, 95 were for service calls such as assisting people are their homes, 74 were for structure fires, 55 were for weather related emergencies and nine involved hazardous materials.

The 74 structure fires AVFD responded to resulted in an estimated $1.9 million in property damage, but it could have been worse.

“The majority of our firefighters are now State Certified Firefighters, which is the same certification achieved by paid departments throughout the State of Tennessee,” said Chief Bagwell in the news release. “All but seven of the 39 firefighters are medically trained with five being trained to the paramedic level, and seven being trained to the EMT level. Of the seven that are not medically trained, six of them will be certified within the next six months."

The department’s busiest month in 2009 was March, when volunteer firefighters responded to 70 calls for assistance. That was followed by May with 70 calls.

November was the department’s slowest month but most costly. Firefighters responded to only 28 calls but those incidents results in nearly $800,000 worth of property damage.

The last month of 2009 had nearly had the nearly half the calls of the departments busiest months, but kept crews on their toes. There were 38 calls for assistance. 24 of those calls were emergency medical calls, eight were motor vehicle accidents, two were structure fires, two were service calls and two were false alarms.

The busiest days of the week for AVFD crews were Wednesday, Friday and Saturday with the majority of the calls coming in between 4:00 p.m. and midnight.

Off all the stats, the most impressive number was the average response time to emergencies, which was about five minutes on each call.

"This is a direct affect of having our volunteer firefighters staff our main station in Andersonville," said Bagwell. "We've been very lucky to have highly trained and motivated members, who have a huge desire to serve their fellow man and make a difference in folks lives at potentially the worst time of their lives.”

AVFD crew members are currently installing free smoke alarms across the 65 square miles of northeastern Anderson County they cover. You can find out how to get one as well as learn more about the department and how to join by clicking on the link below.