In the 1^st quarter of FY22, there were 26 fire incidents within city limits. 21 calls had response times for the first-arriving unit under 0:08:30. The average response time of these Fire calls was 0:06:41. This quarter, the target was met with 80.8%, compared to last quarter at 73.9%.

Of the five calls with response times over 0:08:30, four were passenger vehicle fires and one was a building fire. Vehicle fires are notoriously difficult to reach within 0:08:30. The vehicle fires on November 23rd and November 26th were delayed due to inaccurate directions, inability to locate, and traffic . The vehicle fire on November 27th was delayed due to time of call at crew change and possible holiday weekend traffic. The vehicle fire on December 6th was delayed due to extended turnout time. A building fire on October 31st was delayed due to extended turnout time in the middle of the night as the call dropped at 4:04 AM. 

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.