Fire Service Cuts Delay Response of Emergency Crews

Rotating reductions in fire and emergency medical services throughout Los Angeles have slowed response times by nearly two minutes to shootings, stabbings and automobile accidents, Fire Department officials said Thursday.

Average response times for heart-attack calls have slowed by 36 seconds and for fires by 12 seconds, Battalion Chief William Bammatre said in a report to the Los Angeles Fire Commission on the effects of the cuts, known as “rolling brownouts.”

Bammatre was unable to say, however, whether the brownouts, which went into effect July 8 as part of an effort to meet a $23.4-million cutback ordered by the City Council, have resulted in deaths or more serious property damage. He said the response times--which were compiled by comparing figures from last year--were based on an early analysis of the impact on reductions in equipment and personnel.

Nonetheless, Fire Chief Donald O. Manning warned that continued delays in emergency response times combined with cutback-related reductions in equipment maintenance, training for high-rise fires and fitness training could have a dire “cumulative effect.”

“Today we are current, next month we are going to be less current,” Manning said. “Proficiency is going to be impacted.”

Andy Fox, president of the United Firefighters Local 112, was more blunt.

“In the city of Los Angeles, people are getting shot and stabbed every day . . . a delay of over two minutes is going to cost lives,” Fox told the commission. “Citizens and firefighters are going to pay the price.”

The brownouts eliminate 13 engines and truck companies and six paramedic ambulances daily from some of the department’s 104 stations on a rotating basis for nine-day periods.

Forty-six stations--those stations with both an engine and truck company on the premises--are subject to the cutbacks. Personnel involved are reassigned to vacancies elsewhere.

In heart-attack calls, the American Heart Assn., which sets standards for emergency responses, says the first team should arrive within 3 1/2 minutes prepared to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation, with fully trained paramedics arriving within eight minutes.

Before the brownout went into effect, the department responded 80% of the time within five minutes to emergency medical calls, Fire Department officials said.

Manning said he has been assured by the City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee that the 2,742-member department has “first priority” if city revenues increase enough to permit restoration of funding.

Meanwhile, Mayor Tom Bradley has proposed an increase in ambulance fees as a means of restoring $4.4 million to the Fire Department budget.

But City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the finance committee, has said there is not enough council support to impose new taxes or fees that would eliminate the department’s budget cuts.