LAFD standards-of-cover report finds major coverage gaps; council votes to note and file, seek annual updates

Summary

Battalion Chief Eric Roberts told the Public Safety Committee that Los Angeles Fire Department response times are roughly twice the national recommendation and that the department needs hundreds more firefighters and dozens of stations. The committee voted to note and file the report and requested annual updates tied to budget review.

Battalion Chief Eric Roberts, presenting a report prepared with the International Association of Fire Fighters, told the Los Angeles City Public Safety Committee on Oct. 30 that the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) is "under resourced, understaffed, and underfunded for decades." Roberts said the department cannot meet the NFPA 1710 benchmark of a four-minute arrival for much of the city and offered short-, medium- and long-term remedies.

The briefing included data the department said show LAFD can reach only about 49.2% of residential locations within four minutes for an EMS call and that the department's ninetieth-percentile travel time is 7 minutes, 53 seconds—about twice the NFPA recommendation. "We went from a single focused fire department to an all hazard, all risk fire department," Roberts said, noting a rise from roughly 100,000 runs historically to about 514,000 runs in 2024.

The report recommended a mix of immediate deployments (for example, assigning 42 type-1 engines now in life-force configuration and deploying fast-response…

LAFD standards-of-cover report finds major coverage gaps; council votes to note and file, seek annual updates

Summary

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