Anchorage opioid overdose calls down 10%, fire department says

Opioid overdose calls to the Anchorage Fire Department fell about 10% so far this year compared with last year, Battalion Chief Chip Searns told the Anchorage Assembly's Public Safety Committee Wednesday. The department does not yet know why.

"While that is encouraging, I don't know specifically what conclusion I can draw," Searns said. He said the cause could be shifts in drug supply and demand, or how the department defines an overdose in its records.

Hospital transports have stayed relatively steady, but the people not transported include those who died. "A lot of these are people who are not candidates for resuscitation, who have succumbed fatally to their overdose. That isn't well represented in here," Searns said. That group also includes people revived by public Narcan who leave before crews arrive, which Searns called "a victory in terms of them being alive. But also guarantees that they recycle back into the system."

Public Narcan use rose and then plateaued through 2024, Searns said, but he has not seen a matching drop in Narcan administered by firefighters.

A department map plots overdose calls across the city. "This is not an unhoused problem that occurs only in the north part of Anchorage," Searns said.

The department's CORE team is developing a buprenorphine program to help people revived with Narcan get through withdrawal and into treatment. The program is small but "profoundly effective," Searns said.

State figures put the 2024 age-adjusted overdose death rate for the Anchorage region, counting all drugs, at 74.0 per 100,000 people, down from 79.8 in 2023.

Health Department Director Kimberly Rash said Narcan kits are available from her department, Project HOPE and vending machines, including at libraries. East Anchorage resident Jamie Lopez said overdose deaths are not being reported and asked to see the figures. Thea Agnew-Benben, a special assistant to the mayor, said the city's crisis response serves people "whether they're housed or unhoused," and that the next quarterly crisis response dashboard is due in November.