Recently, some fire departments have found themselves under scrutiny by the media and elected officials over the issue of response times. NFPA 1710, Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments, requires specific times for the response of fire and emergency services. While the intent of the Technical Committee was to provide response timelines based on empirical data, the value of that data can get lost when departments are taken to task for their interpretations of those requirements. But the question remains: How fast is fast enough?
NFPA 1710 provides clear requirements for the optimal time it should take for fire apparatus to travel to the scene. In Chapter 3, the term time is broken into eight specific components, including travel time, defined as “the time interval that begins when a unit is en route to the emergency incident and ends when the unit arrives on scene.” Chapter 4 requires that fire departments establish travel-time objectives of 240 seconds or less for the arrival of the first engine company at a fire suppression incident. If that four-minute limit is so clear, why have departments found themselves in the hot seat?