In the 3rd quarter of FY20, there were 28 fire incidents within city limits. 25 calls had response times for the first-arriving unit under 0:08:30. The average response time of these 28 calls was 0:06:16. This quarter, the target was met by 89%, compared to last quarter at 85%.

Of the calls with response times over 0:08:30, one was a building fire, one was a trash fire, and one was a road/freight vehicle fire.

A trash fire on 6/11/2020 had a delayed response time due to location; the responding crew reported that from their station to the call location out of district that had approximately a 9-minute drive time. A building fire on 4/29/2020 was delayed slightly due to two different structure fires being dispatched at approximately the same time and crews being rerouted to a new location. A road/freight vehicle fire on 5/7/2020 had a delayed response due to its highway location and the crews having trouble locating the exact scene.

Below is the categorical breakdown of this quarter’s emergency fire responses:

Time elapsed between receipt of an Emergency Fire Call within corporate city limits by the telecommunications operator to the arrival of the first Sugar Land Fire – EMS (SLF -EMS) unit on scene.

SLF-EMS Unit: A fire apparatus designed to be used under emergency conditions to transport personnel and equipment and support the suppression of fires or mitigation of other hazardous situations.

Emergency Fire Calls: Calls within city limits coded NFIRS Incident Types 100-170, which includes, but is not limited to: structure fire, vehicle fire, natural vegetation fire, and cooking fire. 

Results are reported as the percentage of Emergency Fire Calls responded to within the target time of 08:30 (mm:ss).

80% of all responses to Emergency Fire Calls within 08:30 (mm:ss). This target includes a 01:00 dispatch call processing time and 07:30 response time.

A rapid response to emergency calls helps  save lives, prevent unnecessary property loss, and ensures public safety. 

In October of 2018, City of Sugar Land Fire-EMS, alongside Sugar Land Dispatch, began a new system of call prioritization based upon call acuity. This new call prioritization system was based on a recommendation from the Fire-EMS assessment provided from an independent consulting firm in 2017. This new system means that emergency Fire and EMS units are traveling to low acuity calls without lights and sirens. This system is meant to apply the appropriate level of risk required to respond efficiently and effectively to the incident at hand. Therefore, if a unit is on response to a non-emergency call with lights off, and the call gets upgraded to emergency status, lights will be turned on at that given point in the response. Since more calls are being responded to non-emergency with sirens and lights off, we expect to see a slight increase in response times city-wide. 

The effects of this new call prioritization system will continue to be monitored by the department.