From house fires to rescues: Tulsa firefighters face over 800 calls during winter weather

The Tulsa Fire Department has responded to nearly 1,000 calls during the winter weather this week.

Crews have gone to fires, car crashes and have rescued dozens of people stuck out in the cold.

Calls since Tuesday at 6 a.m.

The Tulsa Fire Department has responded to 866 calls since the winter weather rolled into Green Country.

"We kind of like to think of ourselves as the problem solvers. If they don't know where to send the call, often times it comes to us,” said Andy Little with the Tulsa Fire Department.

They responded to 64 car crashes and 18 calls for people who were in the cold weather too long. They went to 12 house fires, 10 apartment fires and two building fires.

There were also 15 carbon monoxide calls and most of those were because people were trying to find ways to keep their homes warm.

"Space heaters, we've seen people use grills, generators inside the home. All of these things can be very dangerous, and we don't want people to be using those,” said Little.

Cold Exposure Calls

Crews also rescued two homeless people who were trapped in their tent, and too weak to get out. The Tulsa Fire Departments Incident Response Team also used a van to take 34 homeless people to area shelters.

"It may not sound like a huge number, but 34 people is a lot of people when you are considering they could have potentially died in that situation,” said Little.

Impact on firefighters

Little says their job to help people no matter the weather, but these conditions do take a toll on firefighters.

"They may be at a house fire one moment and the next moment they may be at a medical emergency helping someone get up who has fallen,” said Little.

Frozen Pipe Issues

Little says they've also had several calls for burst pipes already, including 30 alarm calls to businesses this week.

They expect it to see more of that, with the warmer weather coming this weekend.