RACINE, Wis. — First responders across Wisconsin and nationwide continue to adapt to the ebb and flow of COVID-19 cases.

Nearly two years into the pandemic, frontline workers still deal with daily exposure to the virus and staffing shortages.

The Racine Fire Department is no exception. Assistant Chief Brian Wolf said December and January were particularly challenging months, as omicron rapidly spread through Wisconsin. He recalled many days being down at least eight first responders per shift.

“Anytime we drop below 31, we’re short,” he said. “We had to bring people in on overtime shifts just to staff the stations appropriately, so we did get hit hard.”

Station 1 is now back to full staff, but the possibility of another wave of COVID cases is never far from Wolf’s mind. His team also answered twice as many calls as they normally would during the height of omicron. This is directly due to needing to respond to COVID-related calls as well.

“It puts a lot of stress and the workload on our current staff,” said Lt. Brian Turczynski. “I believe last year in 2021, the City of Racine Fire Department ran approximately 12,500 calls, so that taxes our resources a lot.”

Wolf said this year is on pace with last year regarding the number of calls his department will likely answer. In 2020, RFD answered approximately 11,000 calls.  

“The number of COVID cases has gone down a lot, but we do still see them on a day-to-day basis,” Wolf said. “Responders are still wearing masks and being safe so they don’t bring it home to their families.”

All equipment, including each fire and EMS unit, is sterilized after each call. 

“We work here and don’t want to take it home to our families,” Turczynski said. “I have young kids, so it’s a challenging time.”

The RFD has avoided needing to prioritize calls thus far, but Mayor Cory Mason said it is a concern that he always has. 

“We’re almost at two years of doing this and we’re learning that we cannot sustain emergency level volume at 11 out of 10 forever,” Mason said. “We need to make sure if people need that ambulance ride to the hospital, they can get it and when they get to the hospital, there’s a place for them to go.” 

Like other parts of Wisconsin, COVID case numbers in Racine are ebbing right now. 

The city is below 60 cases, compared to over 1,600 per 100,000 back in January.

“We’re all hopeful that these numbers on the decline are the beginning of the end of COVID being at least at the level we’ve seen in the last two years, but we’re cautious,” Mason said. “We thought last July that we were through the worst of it, but it came back with some real fury.”

The City of Racine voted to lift its mask mandate Tuesday night. This means masks are now optional within the Racine Unified School District and for all city employees, including first responders.