How does South Dakota’s emergency preparedness compare to the rest of the country?
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - In an emergency, we count on the quick response of police officers, EMS workers and firefighters to keep our families and communities safe.
Researchers from Rainbow Restoration set out to discover which states are the best prepared for an emergency, utilizing Bureau of Labor Statistics to find the number of first responders per 10,000 residents.
They took the number of police officers, sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, and paramedics and divided the totals by the state’s working-age population.
According to their research, South Dakota has 46.9 first responders per 10,000 people.
Although South Dakota has 26.49 police officers per 10,000 people, the state has the third-least amount of firefighters, with only 6.8 per 10,000.
South Dakota residents were shown to make the 6th fewest amount of 911 calls, at 2.08 per first responder weekly.
North Dakota has the third-most first responders per 10,000 residents and makes the second-fewest number of 911 calls at 1.54 weekly.
In the region, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota have the third, sixth and tenth-least first responders per 10,000 residents, respectively.
You can view the full results of the study here.
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