San Jose Fire Department Under Pressure To Improve Emergency Response Times, Gets Better
SAN JOSE (KCBS) — New data reveals the San Jose Fire Department is arriving on the scene of emergency calls within eight minutes, close to 90 percent of the time—an improvement over the end of last year.
San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed said that while the numbers are encouraging, the department still has some way to go.
"They are not as good as we want them to be but their improvement over previous months of the year, and certainly an improvement over last year. Over the last few months the average has been above 90 percent, when you look at all the months together," Reed said.
San Jose Fire Department spokesman Brad McGibben said that three factors in the response time equation are dispatch time, turnout time and travel time.
"Both dispatch time and turnout time we can control internally; travel time is a little more challenging because we're dealing with how many available resources we have—whether or not it's the first unit available or that first unit is already on a call," he said.
Santa Clara County Supervisors are continuing to withhold $700,000 in grant money because of inadequate response times.
Reed had cited improving response times as one of his top priorities during his State of the City address.