Chris Jones is the newest captain in the Manteca Fire Department.

His promotion was announced earlier this month by Interim Fire Chief Dave Rudat.

Jones started as an Explorer with the Modesto Fire Department, worked with Hughson Fire, and then served with CalFire before joining the Manteca Fire Department in 2009,

Andrew Sammutt has been promoted to engineer.

Sammutt joined the Manteca Fire Department in 2017. He also serves as the department’s training officer for reserve firefighters.

He also has devoted countless hours to maintain his role as a military helicopter manager on mutual aid assignments.

June service stats

Manteca Fire handled 945 calls in June.

The bulk — 616 — were rescue/medical calls.

There were 37 fire calls.

The other calls included 224 public assists, 52 false alarms. and 16 classified as either HazMat or other.

Manteca is on pace this year to  match or exceed the 11,303 calls they handled in 2024.

Roughly two thirds of the calls last year were rescue/medical related.

Manteca Fire Department handled 470 fire calls in 2024. The homeless were involved in 173 of those calls.

That is 36.8 percent of all actual fires citywide.

There were 235 homeless in Manteca at the start of 2024 based on the last point in time count conducted in January of that year.

The homeless represented roughly 3 percent of the city’s overall population of 92,000 at the start of 2024.

As such, 3 percent of the population were connected with 36.8 percent of the fires.

Typically, they involve warming or cooking fires.

Over the years, several have gotten out of control and heavily damaged vacant buildings.

That underscores what is at stake in Manteca’s ongoing efforts to get the homeless off the streets and to enforce anti-camping laws that has been allowed on a more robust manner since the Supreme Court ruling last year.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com