THE BRONX IS ON F**KING FIRE! IT'S A JUNGLE OUT HERE!

Long, hot summer.

That's the catch phrase that starts making the rounds in June, when the weather gets warm and there are more people hanging out - and violence erupts.

This season seems to have earned the title, being one of the warmest anyone can remember, temperaturewise and humiditywise.

And, in the Bronx, it certainly is proving to be one crimewise.

Emergency Medical Service Division Chief James Booth can attest to both.

His paramedics and EMTs in the eight ambulance stations in the borough have responded to an average of 795 calls a day, with a peak of 927 on Aug. 9.

"It's not like the crack wars in the 1980s," said the 28-year veteran. "But there is a resurgence; shootings, assaults, stabbings, violence in general." And an uptick in heat-related illness calls.

The murder rate has soared nearly 22% in the Bronx this year, according to NYPD statistics. Eighty-four people have been slain through Aug. 15, up from 69 during the same period a year ago.

There have been 257 shootings, down slightly from last year's 262. The number of shooting victims is 310, down from 317 by this time last year.

But eight people were shot in the borough during one Friday night, Aug. 13.

Fourteen people were shot across the borough the previous Friday night.

Out of those 22 victims, four died.

"Many are drug-dealer-on-drug-dealer," a veteran investigator said. "In the 47th Precinct, you get many uncooperative victims."

Indeed, on Aug. 12, a mortally wounded man lying on a Wakefield streetcorner refused to tell cops who shot him and reportedly cursed at the officers instead.

But innocent bystanders are dying, too.

A Connecticut teen drinking a Slurpee in a courtyard on Fenton Ave. was fatally shot in the chest by a gunman in a speeding sedan. Cops do not believe Tashawn Bromfield, 15, was the intended target and are probing whether the drive-by shooting was a case of mistaken identity or part of a gang initiation.

"They're shooting a lot, spraying, popping rounds," said the investigator. "They'll hit someone a half a block away."

The guns are rarely recovered, he said. And while he said more people seem unafraid to carry guns lately, the usual scenario is that when a dispute occurs, the aggrieved person will leave and get a gun, come back and spray a block party or a streetcorner or an apartment full of people.

He said arrests are being made; he cited four suspects collared in the Aug. 6 shootings and four arrests in the gunplay of Aug. 13.

With all the shooting victims, we're lucky there are not many more fatalities. The investigator credits bad aim, as well as better emergency care.

"Thank God they are notoriously bad shooters," he said.

Paramedics, EMTs, doctors and nurses at trauma centers at Lincoln Hospital, Jacobi Medical Center and St. Barnabas Hospital are keeping more people alive who, years ago, would have died.

Since 1990, when the city was exploding in gunfire, EMS has decreased the time it takes to respond to a trauma case from 8 minutes, 4 seconds to 6 minutes, 49 seconds.

You've heard of the "golden hour" - if a trauma victim gets into the operating room within 60 minutes, the chance of survival is great. The "platinum 10 minutes" is the window for EMS to get the victim to a trauma center.

"We stress 'load and go,'" said Booth. "The patient gets a quick, well-cared-for ride. Everything is done en route."

If a shooting isn't fatal, though, most people forget about it. It fades from the headlines.

If you had more than a dozen people shot and wounded in Manhattan on a single night, there would be outrage. When it happens in the Bronx, it doesn't cause much of a fuss at City Hall.

"We didn't live on Fifth Ave.; we live in the jungle," Bick Pimental told a Daily News reporter after his friend, Alexis Abreu, 16, was lured from his Cromwell Ave. home and fatally shot on that bloody overnight of Aug. 6.