WFPS responded to record number of medical calls in 2025, annual report shows

Firefighters and paramedics in Winnipeg responded to a record number of medical calls in 2025 as the city’s struggle with addictions-related calls persisted, according to a first-of-its-kind annual report published Thursday.

There were 136,198 total incidents and 114,700 medical-related incidents attended to by the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service in 2025, the highest number on record, said the WFPS report.

Out of those medical incidents, 61,356 resulted in response from both fire and emergency medical services, another 26,732 were handled by ambulance-based paramedics and 22,586 by firefighter-paramedics without assistance from an ambulance.

“We’ve got rising demand. It’s recognized, we’re working on plans for the future here, in terms of future budgets and what is needed to protect our city,” WFPS Chief Christian Schmidt said Thursday.

“But, at the end of the day, residents can rest easy (knowing) that we’ve got an extremely dedicated workforce here.”

The report includes previously released data, but is the first annual roundup report from the WFPS, made possible after upgrades to the department’s communication dispatch system, Schmidt said.

Across the year, there were a combined 64 hours and 26 minutes where there were no ambulances available to respond to calls anywhere in the city. That’s over three hours more than the year before and over seven hours more than what was recorded in 2023.

The Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union, which represents Winnipeg paramedics, is seeing the consequences of staffing shortages daily, president Kyle Ross said.

“The calls are getting more difficult, people are dealing with opioid addiction and all these other pretty acute issues you’re seeing, and our members don’t get the opportunity to recover when they do these difficult calls,” he said.

In 2025, the WFPS responded to approximately 27 calls every 24 hours related to drug use, including alcohol.

Alcohol was involved in 4,681 calls to the WFPS, and opioids were involved in 3,269 calls, increases of 453 and 178 calls, respectively, compared to 2024.

Meanwhile, the WFPS responded to fewer fires in 2025 (3,242) than in 2024 (3,507), but United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg president Nick Kasper called that number “nothing to celebrate.”

“We still have the highest rate of structure fires anywhere in Canada, and here, six months into 2026, we’ve seen something like 14 fatalities to structure fires in Winnipeg, which is about five times the Canadian average,” he said. “We have a huge problem.”

Response times remain high — the 90th-percentile response time for first crews at a top-priority fire-rescue was 9:28, longer than other, similar-sized Canadian cities.

The 90th-percentile response for the first arriving ambulance was 19:27, something Schmidt described as a significant concern.

“(That’s) simply unacceptable for a major urban centre the size of Winnipeg, particularly with some of the challenges that we have here in our city,” he said.

Incendiary fires — or fires set on purpose, but not necessarily arson — accounted for 1,008 investigations in 2025, or about one-third of all cases.

Schmidt, who joined the service in 1993 and is retiring next week, said the city will now have to account for “extreme growth” of its population, particularly in communities on the periphery of city limits, in its future budgets.

“We’re going to avoid situations like we had in Waverley West, where essentially, we had a community developed there in fairly short order that ended up being the size of about the city of Brandon with no emergency services station in place to serve that community,” he said.

“That’s something we’ve learned from, and we’re not going to repeat that going forward into the future.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

WFPS 2025 annual report