Life on the line: 911 breakdowns at LAFD
Controversy over the Los Angeles Fire Department’s response times erupted in March after The Times reported that fire officials admitted publishing incorrect data making it appear rescuers arrived at emergencies faster than they actually did.
The Times has followed up with a series of investigative stories using the California Public Records Act and ground-breaking data analysis that has uncovered deep-rooted problems in a safety net millions of Angelenos rely on when they dial 911.
Read the full Times coverage.
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LAFD Chief Brian Cummings told the city Fire Commission Tuesday he’s pulling back for more study an ambitious plan called for by the City Council that would boost the department’s ranks and aim to lift its sagging response times. Last December, Council members Eric Garcetti and Mitch Englander demanded that fire officials appear before the full panel after Cummings failed to produce the multi-year budget plan they requested earlier in ...
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The fire chiefs from county, city and Glendale fire departments recently met to lay the groundwork for a possible regional network that would automatically deploy fire and rescue based on their location to an emergency, according to this letter from county Fire Chief Daryl Osby. The report was prepared in response to a motion by Supervisor Mike Antonovich following a Times investigation that found the Los Angeles Fire Department rarely ...
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Dec. 11, 2012
By Robert J. Lopez, Ben Welsh and Kate Linthicum
A court ruling last year that made the city liable for $8 million in unpaid dispatcher overtime.
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Dec. 10, 2012
By Robert J. Lopez, Ben Welsh and Kate Linthicum
Los Angeles officials are pressing for a major cost-cutting change at the Fire Department’s troubled 911 call handling center despite a top commander’s warning that making the move is too risky and would jeopardize public safety. Assistant Chief Daniel McCarthy, the call center commander, warned in a June report to the chief that making the staffing changes before improved computer equipment is in place “would be a tragedy for those ...
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Dec. 2, 2012
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Dec. 2, 2012
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Los Angeles Fire Department officials, facing criticism over slow response times to 911 calls, are considering two new strategies that could get rescuers to the scene of medical emergencies more quickly. One program, known as “quick launch,” reduced the time it took to get fire units moving by an average of 50 seconds — roughly in half — during a test period in 2006. The experiment allowed dispatchers to send ...
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A long-awaited review of Los Angeles Fire Department response times has found that the agency used inaccurate data “that should not be relied upon until they are properly recalculated and validated.”
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Oct. 20, 2012
By Ben Welsh, Robert J. Lopez and and Kate Linthicum
Since 1980, the Los Angeles Fire Department has had an automatic aid agreement with the county calling for the two agencies’ dispatch system to be joined. The document, below, has been repeatedly revised. But the departments have never fully linked their 911 systems. The LAFD’s dispatchers have the ability to call in help from the county, but rarely do so, according to a Times analysis.
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Oct. 20, 2012
By Ben Welsh, Robert J. Lopez and and Kate Linthicum
The original 1979 proposal for an automatic aid agreement between LAFD and the county Fire Department promised to save lives if the two systems were joined. The document, below, has been repeatedly revised in the years since. But the two departments have never fully linked their 911 systems. The LAFD’s dispatchers have the ability to call in help from the county, but rarely do so, according to a Times analysis.
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Oct. 20, 2012
By Ben Welsh, Robert J. Lopez and Kate Linthicum
This 1984 Times article chronicled the death of Linda Jefferis, who suffered a fatal heart attack while driving the thin strip of the Los Angeles city limits that connects South L.A. to the harbor. Because that area belongs to the city, Jefferis was forced to wait for far away LAFD rescuers to arrive, even though county stations on the other side of the border were closer. The delay in medical ...
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Oct. 20, 2012
By Ben Welsh, Robert J. Lopez and and Kate Linthicum
The family of Stephanie Hooks is suing the city of Los Angeles claiming that a slow response by the Los Angeles Fire Department contributed to her death.
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Oct. 20, 2012
By Ben Welsh, Robert J. Lopez and and Kate Linthicum
Below is the full statement of Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Brian Cummings in response to questions from The Times about his department’s automatic aid agreement with the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
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Below is the full statement of Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Brian Cummings in response to questions from The Times about a recent LAFD report that scrutinized the performance of the department’s call center.
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The document below is an excerpt from a printed version of the scripted questions LAFD dispatchers must work their way through on a computer as part of every 911 call. It describes how dispatchers must respond to reports of cardiac arrest, where the heart suddenly stops beating.
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Los Angeles Fire Department dispatchers waste valuable seconds getting 911 callers to start CPR on cardiac arrest victims, often beginning the life-saving procedure after the point at which brain death begins, according to this sharply worded internal study obtained by The Times. The full report is below with excerpts from 911 calls highlighted as examples by the department.
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This LAFD memo describes how the department’s dispatching database should be approached by analysts. It shows staff members struggling to explain the department’s own procedures. “We need to come up with a listing of what to exclude!!!” the memo reads, in a section dedicated to spelling out which records to remove when analyzing dispatch data.
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June 21, 2012
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Seeking to bolster public confidence in how the Los Angeles Fire Department responds to emergencies and handles data, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has called on the City Council to dip into budget reserves to pay for six additional rescue ambulances and has announced that he wants to install a nationally recognized expert in statistics to oversee the agency’s accounting of its performance. In a letter to the council sent late Thursday, ...
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The Los Angeles Fire Department is taking longer to get to medical emergencies than it was before budget cuts three years ago, according to a much-anticipated audit of the agency’s response times released Friday by City Controller Wendy Greuel.
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Emergency response times provided by Los Angeles fire officials to City Hall leaders cannot be trusted because of problems with software used to prepare the numbers, according to report by Jeff Godown, an expert assigned to audit the Fire Department’s data analysis. The report called on the department to stop using the software until the problem is fixed and recommended an overhaul of the unit that analyzes statistics for Fire ...
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April 5, 2012
By Kate Linthicum, Robert Lopez and Ben Welsh
The mayor last month called for an audit of the department’s response times to reassure the public. City Controller Wendy Greuel, who is conducting the review, sent a letter to fire officials Wednesday complaining that her auditors had not received all of the information they requested. The missing information includes department policies and procedures, as well as an explanation of how the department codes its data, Greuel spokeswoman Shannon Murphy ...
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April 5, 2012
By Kate Linthicum, Robert Lopez and Ben Welsh
In a letter to City Attorney Carmen Trutanich’s office, Brian Currey, Chief Counsel to the mayor, unloaded a lengthy legal analysis claiming the office has hobbled the release of detailed data on how quickly firefighters get to those in need in various parts of the city. Among other things, Currey claimed that the city attorney’s office wrongly warned fire officials that they could be criminally prosecuted for disclosing information that ...
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Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Wednesday afternoon directed his fire chief to stop withholding information from the public on the department’s emergency medical responses. The mayor’s unusually blunt order came after a day of turmoil at City Hall in which council members criticized the department for discontinuing a years-long practice of providing basic rescue response details, such as incident times, locations and the nature of the emergencies, as well ...
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This letter was sent to two Times reporters on Friday who were seeking details regarding emergency incidents connected to a March 7 dispatch system breakdown that delayed responses in at least two incidents.
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March 17, 2012
Firefighters at Station 14 in South Los Angeles said they went to bed on March 1 thinking that their alarms would work because radio watch was canceled. But the alarms failed to work the next morning after a structure fire broke out and left two people dead
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The motion calls for the Fire Department to report on how it calculated its emergency medical response data
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Simmering tensions between Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the head of the city’s firefighter union erupted Tuesday during a news conference about Fire Department emergency response times and dispatch systems. Pat McOsker, president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, had passed out a letter to reporters accusing the department and Villaraigosa of knowingly using “false statistics” to justify budget cuts that resulted in the public “being put in peril.”
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