City committee hears LAFD standards-of-cover report that finds response times nearly double NFPA target, urges short-term fixes and long-term investment

Los Angeles City Public Safety Committee Chair Council member John Lee on Wednesday heard a standards-of-cover analysis for the Los Angeles Fire Department that concluded the department is under-resourced and that response performance falls well short of national recommendations.

Battalion Chief Eric Roberts, assigned to the LAFD planning section, told the committee the study—produced in partnership with labor and the International Association of Fire Fighters—found the department can reach only about 49.2% of locations within the NFPA 1710 four-minute benchmark and that the department’s 90th-percentile travel time is 7 minutes, 53 seconds. “The LAFD has been under resourced, understaffed, and underfunded for decades,” Roberts said.

The report matters because slower response times and gaps in coverage affect emergency medical care and fire suppression across the city’s 468 square miles. The committee voted to note and file the report and adopt related motions calling for regular updates ahead of the budget process.

Roberts said the department responded to roughly 514,000 runs in 2024 and that the city’s 3.9 million residents produce a firefighter-per-1,000-residents ratio of about 0.91—about half the NFPA-recommended range of 1.54 to 1.81. The study recommends 712 additional firefighters in the short term and proposes adding 62 fire stations (the study’s unconstrained methodology suggested 84; staff adjusted that figure accounting for mutual- and automatic-aid agreements). Roberts said the department also proposes pursuing 32…