Response Time Statistics

Our primary mission and main focus is responding to emergency calls for service. Our response times to emergency calls are critical to the outcome of the event for two essential reasons.

1. Response time can be a life or death issue since research has shown that medical intervention begun within 5 minutes of traumatic injury or cardiac events gives the patient a much greater chance of survival.
2. With respect to fires, the fire service is primarily concerned with how response time impacts flame spread. National data from the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) shows that about half of structure fires confined to the room of origin and confined to the floor of origin had a response time of less than 5 minutes.

Turlock Fire places great emphasis on our units driving safely and efficiently to all emergency calls. Our 4 fire stations in Turlock are located in the four quadrants of the city. These locations are an important component to an effective response time. There is much debate in the fire service over exactly what constitutes a “Response Time.” The NFPA 1710 Standard guideline sets the call receipt and processing time at one (1) minute, the turnout time at one (1) minute, and the travel time at four (4) minutes. We do have the ability, through the CAD system, to analyze the full criteria.

The graphs below illustrate our average response times over the past few years. These times help us see if we are meeting our objectives and looking for any trends.

Engine Company Response Times

Cascade of Events Leading to a Response Time

A good response time is the first step in the mitigation of an emergency event. The second step and equally as important is having the appropriate number of properly trained personnel on scene to effectively manage and mitigate the emergency. At the close of 2013 we were down to 42 line personnel, from a high of 47 in 2009. The positions that we have lost have been through attrition and we have been able to backfill our vacant positions with overtime when needed. It is our goal to have 13 firefighters on duty at all times. This allows for 3 firefighters to be assigned to each station with one Battalion Chief serving as the shift supervisor.