LAFD documents on ‘quick launch’ program

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 units be­fore fully de­term­in­ing the nature of emer­gen­cies, ac­cord­ing to in­tern­al LAFD doc­u­ments ob­tained by The Times.