Fire Department Turnout Times: A Contextual Analysis

Fire departments nationwide seek to decrease their turnout times to emergencies. Turnout time is the time from which a dispatcher alerts a fire unit of an emergency to when the unit leaves the fire station. As such, it is an integral component of emergency response time. The National Fire Protection Association has set a 60 second standard for effective turnout. We examine how station design of dormitory location and the time of day of the emergency affect turnout times. Previous research indicates that the location of a station’s dormitory is major component of turnout time. Moving beyond descriptive statistics, we present a causal model and interactive hypothesis. Contrary to previous research, we hypothesize that the effect of station design is conditional upon the time of emergency – that above-the-garage dormitories have longer turnout times during the graveyard shift. We find that station design, per se, does not affect turnout time. We find that the effect of station design on turnout time is conditional upon the time of day of the emergency. Above-the-garage dormitories experience 10.7% longer turnout times, but during the graveyard shift. Across all station designs, the graveyard shift increases turnout times between 50.8% and 58.9%.