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Fire Department response time

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Nov 2, 2009
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3,127
Location
Southern California
Not exactly code-related, but I hope this is the best place to post: can anyone tell me where I can find statistics for fire department (and police dept. and "emergency health care provider") estimated / approximate response times within a particular community?

Is there some kind of national database available? I have a federal housing funding application that requires this information.
 
No, I've not asked yet. It's a very big department (City of LA). I just assumed the information would be avialbale on some national database - the kind of thing that insurers would access.
 
Get current information, as more fire stations close the response times increase.
 
as more fire stations close the response times increase
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That is true! A neighboring City has went from 5 stations to 1. The response to most remote area of the City is now 11:30 from the single station and 22:45 from corner to corner. Well at least they didn't go Public Safety.
 
22:45 just to show up???!!

At that point, you mainly need someone to just roll out the yellow "caution" tape around the ashes.
 
Yes, 22:45 according to the information we have. They have mutual aid agreements with others but that is not always dependable if they are out also....but what are the odds right?
 
FM William Burns said:
Yes, 22:45 according to the information we have. They have mutual aid agreements with others but that is not always dependable if they are out also....but what are the odds right?
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Time in transit of 22 minutes, why roll?
 
Cut taxes, pay more in fire insurance rates, legal transfer of money to insurance compaies. Makes perfect sense.
 
mark handler said:
Cut taxes, pay more in fire insurance rates,
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Tax cut is $100.00, insurance increase is $50.00. That means I have $50.00 to spend as a consumer as I see fit to stimulate the economy. Now times that by the millions of people that are in So. CA and Hey you maybe on to something here which would ***** the local economy
 
mtlogcabin said:
Tax cut is $100.00, insurance increase is $50.00. That means I have $50.00 to spend as a consumer as I see fit to stimulate the economy. Now times that by the millions of people that are in So. CA and Hey you maybe on to something here which would ***** the local economy
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Die from a heart attack, no fire-med, 10k funeral
 
mark handler said:
Die from a heart attack, no fire-med, 10k funeral
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I thought the post was about FD response time not ambulance. Lots of privatized ambulance services that do not operate off of the taxpayers dime
 
mtlogcabin said:
I thought the post was about FD response time not ambulance. Lots of privatized ambulance services that do not operate off of the taxpayers dime
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Our firefighters are paramedics, and our city has fire based ambulance services

As stations are closed the "less than five min" response time will climb, and people will die
 
ISO rating is tied to fire response time; that will be the easiest to nail down. If the answer has to be N/A on the questionnaire, that's what it is.
 
ISO rating only changes when they do the review. I think that is every 5 years. That is a long time between reviews and many things will flucuate in thta time that ISO will nevere know oe question.
 
Related to my prior posting.......... The response time relates to fire calls only. They run BLS (Basic Life Support) and have a private ALS service in their city/county. ISO just left our place last month and will most likely be visiting them soon. Their rating will be lowered and then the citizens can pitch their ...... if they care about it since they didn't do it previously. They did vote against the Public Safety approach.

I do understand the issues with those communities that run ALS and to add salt to the wound; communities who close stations that run BLS with contracts with private ALS contractors can face issues posed by Mark. In our community we often arrive 4-5 minutes before they do since they often have coverage with other counties and aid agreements with other providers. It depends on the amount of ALS units in your specific zone and hopefully they are not on the far end of the county in a time of need.
 
My original post was about filling out a funding application for federal grants for affordable housing. HUD ranks sites and awards their funding based on multiple factors, one of which is emergency personnel (fire-police-medical) estimated response time.

I was trying to find out if there was an objective standard or database that could give the answer. We are in competition with other well-deserving NGO's for the development funds, and it is tempting to give an ovely optimistic answer. In my case, the fire station is 4 blocks away from the propsed site, so I assume "less than 5 minutes" is an acceptable answer... but the reality is probably that the Los Anglees regional 911 phone/dispatch system itself is the bottleneck on response time.

I can remember being at a Sunday AM church service where someone was having breathing difficulties. 911 was called and we were assured a quick response, but after about 8 minutes of no response, someone finally ran the 250 feet to the fire station and got them over to the church.
 
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