Fire Response Times Don’t Reflect Reality

A city auditor’s report on San Diego (Calif.) fire and EMS response times found that figures reported to the city council don’t include all incidents and don’t include call handling time in the analysis. According to the audit, instead of starting the response time clock when a 911 call is answered, the clock begins when a call is entered for dispatch. This method of timing reduces the response time by anywhere from 60 to 97 seconds for each incident, the audit found, making it appear fire units arrive sooner than they actually do. The method improves the fire department’s response time goal of five-minutes 90% of the time. Even with the shorter times, San Diego meets the goal only 54% of the time. City officials say outdated equipment makes it impossible to capture the full call handling times to calculate the response times. The audit also found San Diego does not include in its response time calculations any EMS incidents that occurred when 12 or more ambulances are handling calls. This results is that 37% of all EMS incidents are excluded from any response time analysis. Using the smaller number of incidents, the city easily meets a 12-minute/90% response time goal with a score of 96%. However, using all incidents, the rating would be 92.6 percent, the auditor found. Read more about the situation here.