San Diego Firefighters Failed to Meet Response Time Goals

San Diego firefighters failed to meet emergency response time goals for three years straight in part because of a new dispatch protocol established in 2019 without City Council review, a troubling new city audit finds.

The 2019 protocol delays when firefighters start preparing to be dispatched, with the goals of avoiding trips that could turn out to be unnecessary, leaving firefighters less fatigued and putting fewer miles on fire engines.

But having firefighters wait before starting preparations also delays when they can be dispatched to emergencies, which has lengthened response times — and has likely cost many lives across the city, the 60-page audit says.

The problem isn’t isolated to any particular part of San Diego. Firefighters exceeded the arrival goal of 6 minutes and 30 seconds in all nine council districts in fiscal years 2023, 2024 and 2025.

The audit couldn’t explore the impact of the delays on patient survival rates, because federal patient privacy laws make collecting such data a major challenge, according to the audit and fire officials. But auditors say the impact is existential.

“Every minute of delay reduces the chance of survival for critical medical incidents,” the audit says, noting that some studies show that every minute of delay reduces a person’s chance of survival by 10%.

Fire-Rescue Chief Robert Logan agreed to implement all of the audit’s recommendations within one year, but fire officials defended the 2019 protocol, which they call a triage system.

Fire officials are also blaming the poor response times on a continuing surge in 911 calls they must handle without notable increases in staff or the number of city fire stations. They say calls are up 20% in recent years.

City and fire officials have long complained that the existing network of 50 fire stations is inadequate geographically to access some small nooks and crannies in a city with many canyons and other topographic challenges.

But City Auditor Andy Hanau stressed that the fire crews met travel time goals at significantly higher rates than overall response time goals, indicating that the problem is preparation time — which fire officials call turnout time.

The audit recommends fire officials comprehensively study turnout time and whether the 2019 triage system is notably extending it.

“Fire-Rescue has the data to calculate turnout time but has not settled on a tracking metric to regularly analyze performance to hold crews accountable,” the audit says.

The audit calculated San Diego firefighters’ turnout time — during the 3,000 incidents it studied over three fiscal years — as much higher than the national standard of 1 minute and the city standard of 1 minute and 30 seconds to 2 minutes.

“With the triage delay and slow turnout times, crews do not leave the station for an average of 4 minutes and 20 seconds,” the audit says.

From 2012 to 2018, city fire crews began prepping for dispatch almost immediately after an emergency call came in. But in 2019, fire officials shifted the protocol to waiting until a call went through a triage analysis.

After dispatchers evaluate calls, they divide them into three categories: Level 1 calls like heart attacks and gunshot victims, less urgent Level 2 calls that don’t include imminent threats to life and even less serious Level 3 calls that often don’t require immediate attention at all.

Ambulances, which are operated by private contractors Falck USA and American Medical Response but dispatched by the city, travel to all emergencies. Firefighters go only to Level 1 calls.

From 2012 to 2018, fire crews would prepare for all calls and often head out and then get called back if the call was eventually deemed Level 2 or Level 3.

Now, they don’t even start prepping until a call is deemed Level 1.

The audit criticized fire officials for making that change without council review and for not giving the council adequate data to evaluate the impacts of the change since it was made.

“While both dispatch processes require a trade-off, city leaders are not routinely informed on the costs, benefits and rationale behind the city’s emergency response process,” the audit says.

The audit says the new data on response times and turnout times that fire officials have agreed to present annually to the council’s Public Safety Committee could make a big difference.

“City leaders make budgetary decisions each year based off an incomplete picture of Fire-Rescue’s emergency response process,” the audit says.

Cody Williams, who oversees dispatch for the Fire-Rescue Department, said last week that he will present data in June to the council’s Audit Committee that will paint a somewhat different picture than the audit, which was released early this month.

He said the numbers are skewed by the number of 911 calls rising sharply in recent years.

“The fact that response times are up 18% would have happened regardless of a process change,” Williams said.

Chief Logan acknowledged the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“The department agrees that continued review and stakeholder communication of performance metrics, which can be followed up with system improvement proposals, are vital obligations,” he said in a three-page response to the audit.

The audit was created by Hanau and his auditing staff, who operate independently from other city agencies so they can evaluate without interference.

©2026 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.