On an average day, North Lyon County Fire Protection District has four firefighter-paramedics on duty — enough to staff two ambulances.
The problem, Battalion Chief Bill Snyder told the Fernley City Council Sept. 16, is that the district is regularly receiving more calls than those two crews can handle at the same time.
North Lyon had responded to 2,920 calls through Sept. 15, an average of 11.27 calls per day. During the previous 30 days, crews handled another 329 calls, or about 10.96 per day.
More significant is how often those calls overlap. Snyder said the district has averaged about 5.5 instances per day this year when more than two calls were occurring at the same time.
With four firefighter-paramedics staffing two ambulances, once both crews are committed, “we have zero people to respond to emergencies,” Snyder said. During the most recent 30-day period, overlapping calls had fallen somewhat, to about 3.6 times per day.
The workload is not new. Snyder said that during 2025, North Lyon crews spent an average of 13 hours and 48 minutes of every day committed to 911 calls.
At the same time, the district is carrying five firefighter vacancies. North Lyon has traditionally opened recruitment for 30 to 60 days at a time, but Snyder said the district changed that approach this year and has kept recruitment open indefinitely since approximately May.
About 160 applications have been received through four rounds of testing. Two applicants have been offered jobs, while another round of testing is scheduled for October.
Snyder said some of the vacancies resulted from firefighters leaving for other agencies because of pay, workload and other factors.
The two new hires began a 16-week regional fire academy in Carson City Sept. 21, a significant change in the way North Lyon trains new firefighters.
Historically, North Lyon conducted much of its new-hire training internally while most neighboring departments participated in the regional academy. Snyder said cost and staffing made regional participation difficult: for up to three students, a department must provide an instructor for the academy.
For North Lyon, that would mean taking an experienced firefighter off the line for 40 hours a week for 16 weeks — and then paying to backfill that employee’s normal shift.
A partnership with Central Lyon County Fire Protection District is changing that.
Central Lyon has agreed to cover North Lyon’s instructor, or cadre, costs — approximately $70,000 — without asking North Lyon for anything in return, Snyder said.
That allows North Lyon’s recruits to attend the regional academy without removing another firefighter from an already thin daily staffing roster.
“It’s a good partnership,” Snyder said. “We can continue to provide a service to our public and we can be a little more thorough with the training.”
After completing the academy around December or January, the recruits will begin working with the district before eventually entering paramedic school, a process Snyder said takes roughly another two years.
North Lyon is also using another partnership to extend emergency medical capability.
Snyder said that within about 20 hours of a Battle Born Medevac helicopter being stationed at the Fernley fire station, crews responded to a patient with a gunshot wound to the chest. The patient reached the trauma center at Renown in about 28 minutes from the time of the incident and survived.
Snyder called the response an example of how a public-private partnership can improve rural emergency care.
North Lyon will hold an open house Oct. 24 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. highlighting the Battle Born Medevac partnership and the people involved in establishing it.
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