NYC Revises Fire Dept. ‘Response Time’ Definition

In the aftermath of several high-profile response delays by the New York City Fire Department, and questions about how response statistics are calculated, yesterday the city council passed legislation to formally defin “response time” and require monthly reports. The “Ariel Russo Emergency 9-1-1 Response Time Reporting Act” was named for a 4 year-old girl who died in a pedestrian accident last June. The family has sued the city both for the police chase before the accident and the alleged negligent operation of the city’s 911 system that led to an eight-minute response delay. Prior to the accident, the fire department reported response time statistics based simply on the dispatch-to-arrival travel time for fire or EMS units responding to the scene. Under the new legislation, the FDNY must now create response time reports that track, “the duration of time between a report to a 911 operator to which fire units or ambulances are required to respond and the time when the first fire unit…arrives on scene.”The new law requires separate monthly and yearly average response time reports for fires and EMS incidents, and by priority. Another report must show the percentage of incidents with a response time of less than 10 minutes to ALS medical incidents.

The Russo’s lawsuit names “Call Operator Jane Doe” at the city’s MetroCenter comm center, unnamed police officers and named city officials. In pertinent parts, the lawsuit says  city officials held out the city’s emergency medical serivce as “duly qualified and capable of rendering timely and adequate emergency response, care and treatment,” the lawsuit says.

Further, the dispatcher, “failed to attend, respond to, and/or ignored requests for provide (sic) first aid, basic life support, advance life support and/or pre-hospital emergency medical services, care and treatment.” City officials failed to adequately implement, test or inspect the 911 system, and did not adequately training the dispatchers. Police have said a calltaker entered a call for service, but that the incident was not noticed when a radio dispatcher took a break and did not transfer her duties to a relief dispatcher.

Download (pdf) the new response time legislation here, and the family’s lawsuit here.