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Fire department says medical calls have set a new baseline; city unveils public fire‑response dashboard
Summary
San Antonio fire officials told the Public Safety Committee that medical calls—particularly 'sick person' incidents—are driving a sustained 15–20% increase in demand since before COVID, and introduced a public dashboard intended to make incident, response‑time and inspection data available to residents and council.
Chief Foster told the committee the department's system is now "driven by medical calls," with 'sick person,' falls and breathing problems accounting for the largest share of incidents across every council district. She said nonmedical calls—lift assists and fire alarms—also place heavy demand on units because they require full responses.
"This is the environment we are currently operating in," Foster said, and added that monthly incident volumes in 2024 and 2025 exceeded pre‑COVID levels and have 'reset' to a new baseline roughly 15–20% higher than 2019. That, she said, is the pressure pushing response‑time, workload and long‑term planning decisions.
Maria Vargas, Director of Integrated Community Safety, demonstrated a new public fire‑response dashboard that will be hosted on sa.gov and linked from the San Antonio Fire Department web pages. Vargas said the dashboard pulls incident data from the city's CAD (computer‑aided dispatch), refreshes monthly with full months of data and will allow users to filter by date, council district or ZIP code. The underlying incident dataset will also be available for public download on opendata.gov.
Vargas walked members through features including a map view by ZIP and council district, median response‑time 'cards' (the dashboard reports median, not average), panels for arson investigations (Mark43 / NIBRS definitions), and a fire‑prevention inspections page (data from Acela). She noted council‑district breakdowns are not currently available for the inspections dataset.
Committee members asked how the dashboard and the department's needs assessment would feed budget and bond decisions. Chief Foster said the needs‑assessment RFP has closed and the city is in evaluation; staff told council they expect to bring a vendor recommendation in April with council consideration in May. Foster and staff said staffing, station locations, equipment and alignment with national standards will be central to that study.
Council members also pressed for outcome data tied to response time. Foster cited commonly used benchmarks, saying national standards fall between 8 and 9 minutes and that the department's current 90th‑percentile figure is approximately 8:37. She agreed to follow up with additional analysis showing how clinical outcomes differ at smaller time‑interval improvements.
The presentation included program results staff called material to demand management: clinical dispatch and the MIH (Mobile Integrated Health) program. Foster reported published counts of 'runs saved' by clinical dispatch and MIH—7,077 in 2024 and 17,723 in 2025—which she said frees units for higher‑acuity calls.
Council members raised neighborhood‑level concerns—districts with higher structure‑fire rates, the role of vacant/unsafe structures, and how uninsured rates or senior populations might correlate with EMS demand. Staff agreed to provide follow‑up data, including incident counts by fire station and a deeper look at hotspots and insurance overlays, and to consider targeted prevention and code‑enforcement strategies to reduce preventable incidents.
The committee did not take formal action on the briefing; staff said follow‑up memos and a return presentation on the needs assessment are planned.
