Crime & Safety

LAFD Response Times Lag in the Valley

The time it takes 911 operators to dispatch firefighters has been getting substantially slower, too.

An audit by City Controller Wendy Greuel released Friday found that Los Angeles firefighters responded to emergency medical calls an average of 12 seconds slower since Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council cut the fire department's staff size in 2009.

The San Fernando Valley saw an even higher increase of 20 seconds.

The audit also found major underlying problems with the quality of the data.

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Greuel's audit also comes the same day the City Council begins discussing the city budget, which includes money for a study of how best to fix the department's broken response-time data system.

Analyses of response times  is "the most important tool we have to show success or failures," said Councilman Mitch Englander, who chairs the Public Safety Committee. "It's what we have to measure to figure out what we should budget. It's not how many firefighters we have sitting in a station. It's the response times. And right now, the response time numbers are wrong."

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Almost  one-third of the 1.9 million responses analyzed by Greuel's staff were missing critical information, such as if the responses were to fires or medical emergencies.

"It's unacceptable that the LAFD has not been able to accurately track its emergency response times," Greuel said, adding that her audit sets the stage for "a real discussion about what needs to be done to improve public safety for all Angelenos."

The report comes the same day it was reported that the time it takes 911 operators to dispatch L.A. city firefighters to emergencies has been getting substantially slower and has fallen below the national standard.

A Los Angeles Times analysis of more than 1 million dispatches from the department's database found that the Fire Department falls far short of the standard that rescue units be alerted within one minute on 90 percent of 911 calls.

Average call-processing time has increased, notably for medical calls, according to The Times. Five years ago, firefighters were dispatched to medical calls within a minute 38 percent of time, the Times analysis found. By 2011, that number dropped to only about 15 percent.

Emergency medical calls account for more than 80 percent of the department's responses.

Greuel's audit of the department's response found that the time it takes firefighters to get to an emergency medical incident once a call comes into a station has increased from an average of four minutes and 45 seconds between 2007 and 2009 when the department was at full strength, to  four minutes and 57 seconds since 2009.

In the Valley there was an increase of 20 seconds. East Los Angeles and San Pedro saw times go up an average of 18 seconds.

One bright spot in the audit included faster response times for non-medical incidents and fires, which took an average of four minutes and 57 seconds, down 21 seconds since 2009.

"The department remains committed to responding the appropriate resource to the correct address as quickly as possible to every incident that we dispatch," Fire Chief Brian Cummings told reporters.


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