Dan Munsey’s Executive Fire Officer applied research project on firefighter workload efficiency included an extensive literature review of how UHU is determined and which thresholds are used. The literature showed wide variation in definitions and in how UHU is calculated and applied (2018). Stout’s framing was managerial rather than mathematical. He defined the unit hour and argued that dispatchers must “utilize the available ‘unit hours’ in the best way…to squeeze the highest response time performance possible.” He did not publish a UHU percentage formula in the 1983 article; consulting firms and industry bodies later codified UHU ratio conventions and thresholds.

Fuzzy UHU Conventions, Thresholds, and Two Examples

No national consensus standard or benchmark exists for unit hour utilization. The measurement started with the Public Utility Model, which featured high-volume, dynamically deployed paramedic ambulances in cities. Recent examples use unit time-on-task to expand the UHU analysis to include emergency responses without transport and the cost of readiness. Cost of readiness includes the on-duty training, call documentation, post-call recovery, and return-from-hospital time.

Baltimore

FACETS performed an operational and management assessment of the Baltimore City Fire Department. At that time, Baltimore had the second busiest fire-based ambulances in the United States.¹

The workload among BCFD unit types is highest for the ALS and BLS ambulances (ranging from 39.27% [9.4 hrs] to 71.07% [17.1 hrs]). These numbers are exceptionally high, especially for employees working a 24-hour shift.

Even the least busy ambulance exceeds the workload percentage recognized by many agencies for 24-hour shift durations (30% or 7.2 hrs UHU 0.3) by almost 10 percent.

This level of workload can result in substantial employee wellness issues, does not provide on-duty time for essential training, and also leads to extended response times at the current level of resource deployment. Moreover, fatigue can negatively affect patient care and decision-making at incidents. (FACETS, 2021, pp. 48-49)

Photo from amott919 (2025, October 1)

FACETS used workload data from 2018-2019. The busiest EMS unit was on task – that is, responding to, at scene, transporting to the hospital, and waiting to clear the hospital – for 17.1 hours in a 24-hour workday. That is a UHU of 0.71.

FACETS, Citygate, Fitch, and other consulting groups are using a UHU of 0.3 as the upper workload limit for 24 hour 9-1-1 units. That is 7.2 hours time-on-task in a 24 hour workday,

Los Angeles City

Citygate Associates 2023 Standards of Cover analysis of the Los Angeles Fire Department observed:

Citygate recommends the LAFD add at least 14 additional rescue ambulances (both ALS And BLS to relieve the busiest types), … Further, there are currently at least 25 rescue ambulances on 24-hour shift staffing that are overworked for excessively long periods of a 24-hour day. Citygate does not believe that critical patient care, much less safe firefighting, is always possible when a crew has gone from call to call for 12 or more hours. (Citygate Associates, 2023, p. 7)

In a 2020 hour-by-hour analysis, LAFD rescue ambulances peaked at 0.62 UHU and experienced up to 15 consecutive hours above 0.40. Citygate recommended changing staffing for the 25 busiest rescue ambulances from 24-hour to 12-hour shifts.

Screenshot from 90210firebuff (2025, January 24)

Here is a summary of their recommendations:

Battalions 1 and 11

• Station 3: 12 hour shifts for both rescue ambulances
• Station 4: Add fourth rescue ambulance
• Station 6: 12 hour shifts for both rescue ambulances
• Station 10: 12 hour shifts for both rescue ambulances
• Station 11: Add third rescue ambulance
• Station 13: 12 hour shifts Rescue Ambulance 13

Battalion 13

• Station 33: Add third ambulance
• Station 46: Add third ambulance
• Station 57: Add fourth ambulance and go to 12 hour shifts for the three existing rescue ambulances
• Station 64: Add fourth ambulance and go to 12 hour shifts for the three existing rescue ambulances
• Station 66: Add fourth rescue ambulance

Battalions 5 and 18

• Station 27: Add third ambulance and go to 12 hour shifts for the two existing rescue ambulances
• Station 58: Add fourth ambulance and go to 12 hour shifts for the three existing rescue ambulances
• Station 61: Add third ambulance and go to 12 hour shifts for the two existing rescue ambulances

Northern Areas

• Station 39: 12 hour shifts Rescue Ambulance 39
• Station 60: 12 hour shifts for both rescue ambulances
• Station 89: Add third ambulance and go to 12 hour shifts for the two existing rescue ambulances

Northern Area: Battalion 12

• Station 7: Add second rescue ambulance
• Station 98: 12 hour shifts for both rescue ambulances

UHU was invented to optimize a dynamically deployed, transport-focused, revenue-sensitive ambulance service and was later imported into fire-based EMS, where units are fixed-post, cross-staffed, and expected to carry a substantial non-emergency workload.

Better Defining Real Work in a UHU Calculation

Wendy Korotkin and Alex Stephenson point out that the UHU metric used to calculate ambulance economics was not designed to measure workload, but no better option exists. Their study identified four operational factors that contribute to cumulative fatigue:

• Night wake-up
• Burst
• Volume
• Call severity

Night Wake-up

Calls from 10pm to 6am trigger a coefficient that grows with each successive interruption: 1.25 for the first wake-up, 1.50 for the second, 1.75 for the third, plus 0.25 for every additional disturbance. Sleep debt is not a step function. Each interruption costs more than the last, and recovery within a single shift does not occur.

Burst

When a unit leaves one call and is dispatched to another within 15 minutes, the second call is flagged as a “burst.” Daytime bursts carry a coefficient of 1.25, and overnight bursts, 1.50. The factor accounts for rehydration, decontamination, report writing, and rest time lost due to back-to-back assignments.

Volume (per 24-hour shift):

Volume is binned by the cumulative call count: no adjustment up to five calls, 1.05 above five, 1.25 above ten, 1.50 above 15, and 1.75 above 20 calls. Volume also serves as a proxy for the volume of administrative work (report writing, equipment checks, restocking) that scales with call count and is invisible to UHU.

Severity

Two incident types were used: structure fires with more than 90 minutes of on-scene time and cardiac arrests with documented compressions. The severity of structure fires increases with time on scene, from 1.50 at 90 minutes to 2.50 after 3 hours. For cardiac arrests, severity is set at 1.50 for adults and 3.00 for children. These values account for both bodily stress and the mental impact of resuscitation, which is significant with pediatric patients. When none of these four conditions are met, the coefficient defaults to 1.0, making the weighted measure standard. Differences between the two occur only when the operating environment includes conditions UHU was never built to register.

The compounding effect of the work becomes clearer through an example. Consider Engine 23, dispatched to a structure fire at 2:30 am for an incident lasting 140 minutes. Three factors influence the timing: it’s the twelfth call of the shift, the crew’s second wake-up, and eight minutes after the last call.

Standard UHU says the crew spent 140 minutes on the call. The weighted measure tells a different story: the call was equivalent to 689 minutes. In this example, the multiplier is 4.92, the product of severity (1.75 for a structure fire above the two-hour threshold), burst (1.50 for an overnight burst), volume (1.25 for the 10-call threshold), and night wake-up (1.50 for the second wake-up). No single factor drives the gap. The compounding does.

What Does This Mean For You?

The weighted measure does not replace UHU. Ambulance economics still needs a denominator built from staffed unit hours, and the budget office still needs a productivity ratio it can defend. The Korotkin and Stephenson framework asks a different question. It asks what the shift cost the crew.

Engine 23’s 140 minutes on scene will show up on the run sheet, in the CAD extract, and in next quarter’s utilization report as 140 minutes. The crew that cleared at 4:50 am, restocked the rig, decontaminated turnout gear, finished the report, and tried to sleep before the 6 am tones will tell you something closer to 689. Both numbers are true. Only one of them predicts whether that paramedic is still riding the seat in five years.

Three Points To Explore

Run the numbers on your own houses. Pull ninety days of National Emergency Response Information System (NERIS) and electronic Patient Care (ePCR) data, apply the four coefficients, and rank your companies by weighted load rather than raw call count. Those are the crews to watch for sick-leave clustering, off-duty injury, disciplinary spikes, and voluntary transfer requests.

Identify the compounding shifts before they happen. Night wake-up and burst are knowable in near real time. A Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) rule that flags any unit hitting a second overnight run within fifteen minutes, or a tenth call before 4 am, gives the on-duty chief a decision point: hold the unit down for the next low-acuity call, cross-staff from a slower house, or bring in an off-duty crew on overtime. You will need to add the trigger logic within the CAD system.

Build recovery into the deployment plan. After a structure fire past the two-hour mark or a worked pediatric arrest, the crew comes out of service for a defined interval. Not at the officer’s discretion, not contingent on call volume, not subject to backfill availability. Peak-demand units, jump companies, and mutual-aid agreements are the mechanisms. The weighted measure is the justification.

UHU was built to price an ambulance. It was never built to measure what the work does to the people doing it. Until something better arrives, a measure that accounts for when the call happened, what came before it, how many preceded it, and what it demanded is the closest the fire service has to an honest number.

Try this for a month. Pick one battalion, one pay period, and the four coefficients above. Run standard UHU and weighted UHU side by side. If the two numbers agree, your deployment model is absorbing the load. If they diverge, you have found a more informed way to describe the emergency response workload.

__________________________________

¹Philadelphia, Los Angeles City, Baltimore, and Chicago are the four busiest fire-based ambulance services in 2026.

References

Citygate Associates. (2023) Los Angeles Fire Department Standards of Cover Analysis. Volume 1 of 3: Technical Report. Citygate Associates LLC. https://ens.lacity.org/lafd/lafdreportarchv/lafdlafdreport1864172030_06012023.pdf

FACETS (2021) Operational & Management Assessment: Baltimore City Fire Department – Final Report. FACETS Consulting LLC. 

Korotkin, W., & Stephenson, A. (2026). Not All Time Is Created Equal: In Firefighting, Time-Based Metrics Can Miss the Real Work. ORMS Today. https://doi.org/10.1287/orms.2026.03.03. https://pubsonline.informs.org/do/10.1287/orms.2026.03.03/full/

Munsey, D. (2018). Determining Workload Efficiency for San Bernardino County Fire Protection District Suppression Crews. [Executive Fire Officer Program applied research project, National Fire Academy]. U.S. Fire Administration. https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/pdf/efop/efo247258.pdf

Patterson, P., Martin, S., MacAllister, S., Weaver, M., & Patterson, C. (2025). Variations in Sleep, Fatigue, and Difficulty with Concentration Among Emergency Medical Services Clinicians During Shifts of Different Durations. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22040573.

Stout, J. (1983, May) System Status Management: The Strategy of Ambulance Placement. Journal of Emergency Medical Services. https://emsmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/System-Status-Mangement-The-Strategy-of-Ambulance-Placement-22-32-1983-05-JEMS.pdf

Feature picture from Emergency Monologues. https://x.com/emergemonos

Los Angeles Skid Row

Skid Row covers about 50 city blocks (0.4 square miles) in Los Angeles and has 12,000 to 14,000 residents. Approximately one-third are persons experiencing homelessness (PEH). The rest live in single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels, residential hotels, or apartments. 68.9% of Skid Row residents live below the poverty line (Ward et al., 2024). This may be the most extreme example of Fire-EMS challenges in high-poverty neighborhoods.

Graphic from: Collins, B., & Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (2016, July-August). Skid row, gallery row and the space in between: cultural revitalisation and its impacts on two Los Angeles neighbourhoods. Town Planning Review, 87(4)

A 1971 UCLA study of the Los Angeles City emergency ambulance system found that 13 of the 632 census tracts, small permanently established geographic areas, generated 10% of the total public emergency ambulance demand. (Aldrich et al. 1971). John Hisserich’s public health dissertation used the same 1964 to 1967 data to analyze the determinants of service in detail.

“Sick Calls” were highly correlated with variables describing census tracts with socioeconomically depressed populations. The 13 busiest census tracts included the city’s three Skid Row areas. Census tracts within the minority ghetto area south of the central city were the next highest-demand areas (1970).

In 1976, Los Angeles city planners created a ‘Containment Plan’, which relocated affordable housing and social services from elsewhere in the region to Skid Row, effectively concentrating the homeless population in one limited downtown area (Haas and Heskin, 1981; Goetz, 1992).

These socioeconomically depressed census tracts are persistent, defined as tracts with 20% or more of residents living below the poverty line for about 30 years (Benzow et al., 2023). The 13 Skid Row census tracts identified by Hisserich show that 79% of residents have lived below the poverty line for 38 years (Benzow & Fikri, 2020).

These tracts have experienced a major change in ethnicity while continuing to have high poverty. Benzow and Fikri (2020) describe what changed:

Hispanics now make up 73 percent of the population of Los Angeles’ high-poverty neighborhoods, even though they represent a little less than half of the city’s total population. Blacks saw their share of the city’s high-poverty neighborhood population fall from 43 percent in 1980 to just 12 percent in 2018, largely driven by their exodus from the city over that time. Los Angeles’ Black population declined by one-third from 1980 to 2018, while its Hispanic population increased by 139 percent. (p 20).

Fires in High-Poverty Neighborhoods

High-poverty census tracts face nearly six times the odds of experiencing multiple serious residential fires compared to the least deprived quartile (Wibbermeyer, 2025; Pae et al., 2025). Family poverty, unemployment, low education, and low household income are all independently associated with higher frequencies of residential fires (Wibbermeyer, 2025; Shai, 2026). In Philadelphia, low income and older housing interact to produce fire injury rates exceeding the combined effects of either factor alone (Shai, 2026).

Outside Fires

The Los Angeles Fire Department responded to 24 homeless encampment fires daily in 2020 (Smith et al., 2020). Most of these fires were within the same 13 census tracts that were the busiest for emergency ambulance calls between 1964 – 1967.

From 2018 to 2024, the unhoused population in Los Angeles grew by 44.6%, from 31,285 to 45,252 individuals, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Rubbish fires increased 475% from 5,541 to 31,964 between 2014 and 2024. “While not all of those have been documented as directly associated with a person experiencing homelessness (PEH), many have,“ the report states.

In 2024, rubbish fires involving PEH totaled nearly half of LAFD’s Rubbish Fire call volume at 46.84%. Meanwhile, fire calls involving homeless persons during that same period accounted for 32.91%, or nearly one-third, of all LAFD fire activity, the report states (Kurzwell, 2025).

Systemic Impact on Fire and EMS Operations

Citygate Associates LLC performed a Standards of Cover analysis for the Los Angeles Fire Department. In this Battalion 1/Battalion 11 cluster image, stations 4, 9, and 11 are among the 10 busiest, while stations 3, 10, 13, and 6 are among the 28 busiest in a department with 106 fire stations.

The top ten busiest engine, truck, and rescue ambulance companies are adjacent to each other, predominantly in two clusters. The individual unit-hour utilization (UHU) measures for these units significantly exceed 30 percent for long, consecutive hours at a time.

Based on this measure alone, the busiest unit crews are overworked and in need of relief units and/or strategies to decrease the quantity of non-urgent EMS incidents. The volume and simultaneous demand on the top 10 to top 28 LAFD stations is the highest Citygate has ever measured in a metro client. (Citygate, 2023, pp. 6-7)

The Battalion 1/Battalion 11 cluster falls within the same census tracts that were the busiest for emergency ambulance calls between 1964 – 1967.

LAFD Fire Station 9

“Skid Road” Fire Station 9 has the smallest first due area in the city, about 1.5 square miles. The station staffs two paramedic-staffed engine companies (Engine 9 & Engine 209), the city’s only stand-alone “paramedic assessment” truck company (Truck 9)¹, two paramedic rescue ambulances (Rescue 9 & Rescue 209), one 24-hour and one variable-hour EMT rescue ambulance (Rescue 809 & Rescue 900), and a paramedic/firefighter fast response vehicle (FR 9).

In the Citygate study, Rescue 809 (EMT) was the busiest LAFD ambulance, with 6,522 annual responses. Paramedic Rescue 9 and Rescue 209 responded to 5,221 and 5,090 calls, respectively. In the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation 2022 video about the Boyd Street Fire, the 19 on-duty members working a 24-hour shift at Station 9 averaged 100 responses every day; 90 percent were EMS calls.

SoCal Connected (2020) Fire Station 9. [Video] Season 10, Episode 1107. Public Broadcasting Service

Fast Response 9

The firefighter/paramedics assigned to the four Fast Response Vehicles (FRV) [deployed throughout the city] have a unique authorization from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services to medically clear certain patients experiencing acute behavioral crises or chronic public inebriation for transport to either a Mental Health Urgent Care Center or Sobering Center, rather than to a traditional hospital emergency room. In addition, all LAFD FRV personnel certified Tactical EMS (TEMS) units and are available to support LAPD SWAT Team efforts. (LAFD, 2020)

This 2:19 minute video shows Fast Response 9 handling a homeless encampment fire in 2025. https://youtu.be/kLgR2QPGFH0

The 2020 Boyd Street Fire – Narrative from the LAFD “Green Sheet”

On Saturday, May 16, 2020, at approximately 18:27:00 hours, the Los Angeles City Fire Department (LAFD) responded to a structure fire at 327 East Boyd Street in the Skid Row [Toy District] area of downtown Los Angeles. The first arriving resources found a one-­story commercial occupancy with light, intermittent brown smoke showing from the top of two closed rolling steel doors. The subject occupancy was doing business as a wholesale distributor to dispensaries and smoke shops, and it had closed for the day prior to the time of alarm.

Conditions noticeably worsened over the next several minutes. Initially, members described a notable change in smoke emitting from the front of the occupancy, and then a rapidly increasing “freight train” or “jet-­like” sound, accompanied by rapid and escalating “popping-­like” noises. Subsequently, companies initiated a rapid retreat – both off the roof and out of the building. As firefighters began initiating their escape, a large volume of smoke ignited, and then immediately following, fire “blowtorched” out of the front of the occupancy, across the street, and out of the rear portion of the roof.

As a result of the catastrophic fire event, just eleven (11) minutes into the incident, twelve (12) firefighters were injured. The injuries were sustained when the firefighters were engulfed by a large volume of fire, some while retreating from interior firefighting positions, and others as they were descending the aerial ladder. All told, eleven (11) firefighters sustained minor to critical burns, and one (1) additional firefighter suffered a lower extremity injury.

The cab of the first-arriving Truck 9, with its deployed aerial ladder, sustained significant damage because both were in the immediate path of the flames. (LAFD, 2020)

This link takes you to the Green Sheet, an Informational Summary Report that is issued by LAFD as a safety/training tool: https://lafd.org/sites/default/files/Boyd_Green_Sheet.pdf

Captain II Victor Aguirre (Truck 9), the last remaining LAFD member to be hospitalized from the Boyd Street Fire, was released following 65 days of care in the burn unit of the Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center.

The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation produced a video about the Boyd Street incident. It includes a description of Station 9’s first due district. https://www.firehero.org/2022/11/18/boyd-street/

24 Hours at LAFD Station 9 (2019)

In December 2019, SoCal Connected, from the local Public Broadcasting System station, spent 24 hours responding to calls from Fire Station 9.

One of my students called the SoCal Connected video “apocalyptic.” https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/socal-connected/episodes/fire-station-9

The Invisible U.S. Fire Problem

A 2025 white paper from Kindling, Inc., sponsored by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), examined how human and shelter vulnerabilities intersect to shape fire risk in U.S. communities.

This scoping paper has shown that the US fire problem is not solved. Certain groups of people suffer disproportionately from fire and evidence indicates people experiencing homeless are particularly vulnerable to fire, as are those living in insecure and vulnerable shelter more generally.

These fire problems seem ‘invisible’ at the national level, but they are plaguing American cities, undermining the lives and livelihoods of affected populations, and having negative impacts beyond those directly affected (such as the fire services and neighbouring communities). (Antonellis et al., 2025, p. 44)

The paper identifies the gaps and challenges when looking at the fire safety of insecurely and vulnerably sheltered populations in the US.

(Antonellis et al., 2025, p. 39)

_______________________________

¹Los Angeles Fire Department “Light Force”

All but Truck 9 are “Light Forces” – a 100′ tiller aerial truck married to a 200 or 300 series engine (pumper) as a single six-person crew. 27 of the 42 light forces are “Paramedic Assessment”; the crew includes one paramedic/firefighter.

Light Force 73 operating in the San Fernando Valley (2015). Photo by Mike Peters. https://www.lafra.org/swift-water-rescue-results-in-medals-of-valor/

90210FireBuff (2025, June 1) catches Light Force 61 arriving at a recreational vehicle fire. 9:42 minute video. https://youtu.be/opMG_PUVZZo

References

Aldrich, C. A., Hisserich, J. C., & Lave, L. B. (1971). An Analysis of the Demand for Emergency Ambulance Service in an Urban Area. American Journal of Public Health, 61(11), 1156-2160.

Antonellis, D., Vaiciulyte, S., Meacham, B., & Jennings, C. (2025, November). The Invisible US Fire Problem. Kindling, Inc. https://kindlingsafety.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/The-Invisible-US-Fire-Problem.pdf

Benzow, A., and Fikri, K. (2020). The Persistence of Neighborhood Poverty: Examining the power of inertia and the rarity of neighborhood turnaround across U.S. cities. Economic Development Group. https://eig.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Persistence-of-Neighborhood-Poverty.pdf

Benzow, A., Fikri, K., Kim, J. & Newman, Daniel. (2023). Advancing Economic Development in Persistent-Poverty Communities. Economic Development Group. https://eig.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/EIG-Persistent-Poverty-Report.pdf

Cali Fire Photo. (2025, December 16) (Small Explosion) LAFD FR9 Handles Rubbish Fire. [YouTube Video]: https://youtu.be/kLgR2QPGFH0

Citygate Associates LLC. (2023) Los Angeles Fire Department Standards of Cover Analysis. Volume 1 of 3: Technical Report. Citygate Associates LLC. https://ens.lacity.org/lafd/lafdreportarchv/lafdlafdreport1864172030_06012023.pdf

Collins, B., & Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (2016, July-August). Skid row, gallery row and the space in between: cultural revitalisation and its impacts on two Los Angeles neighbourhoods. Town Planning Review, 87(4), 401+. http://dx.doi.org.proxy-bc.researchport.umd.edu/10.3828/tpr.2016.27

Goetz, E. G. (1992), Land use and homeless policy in Los Angeles. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 16, 540-54. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.1992.tb00195.x

Haas, G. & Heskin, A. (1981), Community struggles in Los Angeles. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 5, 546-64.

Hisserich, J. C. (1970). Public Emergency Ambulance Service: Determinants of Demand. (Publication Number 7100637) [UCLA]. Public Health Doctoral Dissertation, Los Angeles. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.1981.tb00567.x

Kurzwell, T. (2025, April 16). Unhoused account for nearly one-third of fire calls: Los Angeles Fire Dept. KTLA5. https://ktla.com/news/unhoused-population-accounts-for-nearly-one-third-of-fire-calls-los-angeles-fire-dept/

LAFD. (2020) Informational Summary Report: Injuries/Commercial Structure Fire, May 16, 2020, Boyd Incident. CA-LFD-001073. https://lafd.org/sites/default/files/Boyd_Green_Sheet.pdf

LAFD. (2020, February 11) With the addition of FRV 82 in Hollywood, the LAFD now has FRVs assigned within all four of the department’s geographic bureaus. Los Angeles Fire Department. https://lafd.org/news/lafd-augments-fast-response-vehicle-deployment

NFFF. (2022, November 18) Boyd Street [Vimeo video: 1:08 hours] National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. https://www.firehero.org/2022/11/18/boyd-street/

Pae, G., Paulsen, A., Pothula, S., Galet, C., & Wibbenmeyer, L. (2025). Integrating spatial analysis with census data to unravel the complex interaction between socioeconomic variables, the built environment, and multiple house fires in a predominately rural state. Injury prevention : journal of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention, 31, 327 – 332. https://doi.org/10.1136/ip-2025-045691

Phillips, D. (2020, May 6). 11 Firefighters Escape Through Ball of Fire in Explosion at Downtown LA Building: Some of the LAFD firefighters injured in Saturday’s fire and explosion suffered critical injuries, but all are expected to survive. NBC4 Los Angeles. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/10-firefighters-injured-in-downtown-la-fire/2363892/

Shai, D. (2006). Income, Housing, and Fire Injuries: A Census Tract Analysis. Public Health Reports, 121, 149 – 154. https://doi.org/10.1177/003335490612100208

Smith, D., Queally, J., & Molina, G. (2021 May 12). 24 fires a day: Surge in flames at L.A. encampments a growing crisis. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-05-12/surge-in-fires-at-la-homeless-encampments-growing-crisis.

SoCal Connected (2020) Fire Station 9. Season 10, Episode 1107 [Video 27:57 minutes]. Public Broadcasting Service. https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/socal-connected/episodes/fire-station-9

Ward, J. M., Garvey, R., & Hunter, S. B. (2024) Annual Trends Among the Unsheltered in Three Los Angeles Neighborhoods: The Los Angeles Longitudinal Unumeration and Demographic Survey (LA LEADS) 2023 Annual Report. RAND. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA1800/RRA1890-4/RAND_RRA1890-4.pdf?utm_source=perplexity

Wibbenmeyer, L., Paulsen, A., Pothula, S., Galet, C., & Pae, G. (2025). 608 Geomapping and Spatial Analysis to Examine Socioeconomics, the Built Environment, and House Fires. Journal of Burn Care & Research: Official Publication of the American Burn Association, 46, S183 – S183. https://doi.org/10.1093/jbcr/iraf019.237

Featured Image is from Lopez, S. (2021, April 21) Ending homelessness on skid row won’t happen just because a judge orders it. The Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-21/column-a-federal-judge-ordered-a-skid-row-cleanup-but-is-this-progress-or-posturing

While working as an Assistant Professor at The George Washington University, I followed the efforts of Los Angeles and Baltimore fire departments as they addressed the challenge of adding ambulances to their overworked systems (2000 – 2007). One element was the impact of authorized but unfilled full-time positions.

In looking at other fire departments, we observed that when the percentage of authorized career positions that are unstaffed exceeds 12%, the number of firefighters or single-role paramedics willing to work the overtime to fill those vacancies plummets. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some fire departments are wrestling with this issue today.

The Impact of Excessive Overtime

John Hicks, writing in The Firemen’s Grapevine, articulated the reality for LAFD employees:

You’re working another 72-hour shift. It’s okay, you’re young. You have a girlfriend/boyfriend, but it is just the beginning of the relationship. You recently bought your first condo, but the payment is low, and your health is good. A little time passes. You are still doing those 72-hour shifts, with an occasional 96-hour now thrown in. Your significant other is now wearing a wedding ring, and your first born is asking you if he or she is going to have a brother or sister soon. The condo was traded for a three-bedroom home in suburbia USA along with the cheaper mortgage. Overtime is now more of a necessity than a luxury.

Due to the abundance of overtime, the days of having a “C” shift job have all but disappeared for LAFD members. Not only has this hurt the department by limiting the talents learned by the experience gained by working other types of job, such as construction, electrical, and plumbing related careers, it means that overtime seems to be the sole means for most to earn a little extra money. (2022)

The Challenge of Fire Department Position Management

There has been a long dance over what staffing a fire department needs to meet its operational requirements. Jurisdiction leadership is resistant to creating new full-time positions, as they require 137% funding to cover salary, workers’ compensation, annual/sick leave, training, personal protective gear, and other human resource expenditures.

The jurisdictional administrators and elected leaders struggle with the concept of having a workforce where there are more full-time equivalents (FTEs) on duty than the minimum required seats to fill. As Fitch and Associates LLC partner Steven Knight, Ph.D., points out:

Using my old department as an example, the staffing was determined on a legacy basis and that legacy pre-dated most, if not all, of the institutional knowledge. For example, the department staffed five personnel for every seat on an engine, four for every seat on a truck company, and two for every seat on a rescue. While the daily minimum staffing was consistently applied, it had to overcome the inconsistency in staffing for each position. In fairness, these legacy-staffing strategies may have been compromises over the years and budget cycles, but to clearly articulate the strategy at a future moment in time proves difficult. (2019)

Looking At LAFD

A 2015 Evergreen Data Library audit of overtime led the Los Angeles City Council to approve hiring 48 additional firefighters. At that time, “420 LAFD employees earned more than $100,000 in overtime, and 19 earned more than $200,000. One Fire Captain made $311,316 in overtime on top of a $120,829 salary, for a staggering total of $448,594 in overtime pay. … a Commander at the LAFD informed the Controller’s office that the employee with $311,316 in overtime did obey all policies and procedures regarding overtime.” Evergreen noted that “Los Angeles uses what is called a ‘constant staffing’ model, which intentionally keeps firefighter positions open and uses overtime to make up for the missing employees. … LAFD is understaffed to the brink of collapse.”

Those 48 additional firefighter positions in 2015 did not end the overtime issue.

An audit of the Fiscal Year 2019 expenditures (July 2018 – June 2019) showed that “Eighteen employees of the Los Angeles Fire Department earned more than $200,000 in overtime pay last fiscal year, with one firefighter making $360,010 in overtime.” The 2019 audit also observed that “More than 90% of sworn police and fire employees last fiscal year received overtime, earning an average of $27,737, while 40% of the city’s general employees, defined as other sworn and civilian workers, received such pay. That group earned an average of $7,528” (Smith, 2019)

In 2022, The Center Square reported, “A captain in the department made $434,394 in overtime in 2021, pushing their gross pay to $598,532 to become the highest-paid employee in the city that year. Another fire captain made $420,055 in overtime, pushing that person’s gross pay to $593,314 in 2021. That person was the second-highest paid employee in the city, according to city payroll records. A firefighter with a base salary of $129,638 made $411,606 in overtime, making that firefighter’s total compensation $554,056. There were 86 employees in the fire department who made $400,000 or more in 2021. However, the highest ranking employee was not among those. The fire chief made $338,624, or nearly $250,000 less than the fire captain.” (Gantert et al., 2022)

The 2021 overtime increases in Los Angeles are linked to multiple-day wildfire campaign operations and the interrupted hiring cycle during the COVID pandemic. Emergency workers are dealing with the lingering effects of a massive increase in disease exposure (opioid overdoses and COVID) and a physically challenging workload. The 2023 Standards of Cover Analysis performed by CityGate Associates LLC made this observation: “The volume and simultaneous demand on the top 10 to top 28 LAFD stations is the highest CityGate has ever measured in a metro client”(Citygate, 2023, p. 6).

ICMA and Center for Public Safety Excellence: 21st Century Fire & Emergency Services

The ICMA and Center for Public Safety Excellence white paper on 21st Century Fire and Emergency Services identified two themes:

• The past strategies of deferring conclusive action on critical issues with short-term solutions and leaving them for the next set of leadership are not a sustainable strategy for the future. To continue to do so will worsen the eventual correction(s) that will have to be made.
• We must begin recruiting talent with the mindset, skill sets, and resolve to help build a core organizational culture that can adapt and respond to rapid changes and that is not vested in a 20th-century fire service paradigm or antiquated local government bureaucracy. (2020)

This white paper may serve as a starting point to change the conversation with jurisdictional leaders and elected officials. We need to develop a new narrative that promotes appropriate organizational staffing to meet the expanded and complex roles that a fire department performs today.

The Impact of Overcommitting Existing Staff

Robert Peterson’s Executive Fire Officer capstone research paper examined employee perceptions of hours worked within the Corona (California) Fire Department (CFD). A ten-year retrospective analysis found overtime was only slightly cheaper than hiring, while daily vacancy levels were high enough to justify additional positions outright and identified fatigue-driven injury risk as the hidden cost. Corona Fire Department documented a 93% increase in injury-related time off alongside a 119% increase in forced hire/mandatory overtime over ten years (2024, p. 6). The vacancy is not eliminated; it is converted into overtime liability, workers’ compensation exposure, and attrition.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) awarded a five-year contract to the National Association of State EMS Officials (NASEMSO) to understand the science of sleep health and apply these principles to develop fatigue risk management guidelines. One of the products is the Implementation Guidebook: 2018 Fatigue Management Guidelines for Emergency Medical Services that recommends EMS personnel work shifts shorter than 24 hours (Patterson & Robinson, 2018, p. 7).

Just before 5:20 a.m. Sunday, April 2, 2023, as BLS 16 responded to a call, it slammed into a power pole, a crosswalk sign, and a wall.  The crew, in the 69th hour of a 72 hour shift, suffered minor injuries.

“Right now, we still have employees who are still dealing with sleep deprivation and knowing that this has been going on for over a year and didn’t come up with concrete solutions to solve it,” said Pritchard.

President Rex Pritchard, Long Beach Firefighters Association Local 372, said he and leaders of the International Association of Machinists Local 1930 have been urging the department to address what they say are extreme call volume and fatigue issues for over a year but haven’t seen any changes.

“What is very common in this department is to work 72-hour shifts,” said Pritchard. “You’re lucky if you get, in that 72 hours, four to six hours of rest.” (CBS LA Staff, 2023)

Changing The Conversation

The fire service has argued about staffing in the same terms for decades: seats, minimums, and the price of one more position. Los Angeles added 48 firefighters in 2015 and, by 2021, had 86 fire department employees earning more than $400,000, with a captain out-earning the fire chief by nearly $250,000. Incremental hiring against a structurally under-authorized workforce does not close the gap; it only changes who is exhausted.

The ICMA and Center for Public Safety Excellence white paper offers a more useful frame, calling for recruitment of talent with “the mindset, skill sets, and resolve to help build a core organizational culture that can adapt and respond to rapid changes” rather than one “vested in a 20th-century fire service paradigm or antiquated local government bureaucracy.” That reframing matters because the fire department is no longer staffed for the mission it actually performs. It is an all-hazards, high-acuity, medically dominant enterprise being resourced by a formula built for structural firefighting.

The new narrative should describe risk exposure, service reliability, and total labor cost rather than in seats and minimums. It should treat fatigue management as a standard of care. And it should be honest that the choice was never between spending and not spending. The choice was between spending deliberately on positions and spending involuntarily on the consequences of leaving them empty. The departments that make that case successfully will be the ones able to staff without force hires in the future.

References

CBS LA staff. (4 April 2023). Long Beach unions say ambulance crash highlights staffing shortage. KCAL CBS. https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/long-beach-unions-say-ambulance-crash-highlights-staffing-shortage/

CityGate. (2023). Los Angeles Fire Department Standards of Cover Analysis. Volume 1 of 3: Technical Report. CityGate Associates LLC.

Evergreen Data Library (2015) Los Angeles – Payroll & Overtime Analysis. https://evergreen.data.socrata.com/stories/s/Los-Angeles-Payroll-Overtime-Analysis/ijhv-thke/

Fox, S. (1999 Dec 26). Proposal Targets Paramedic Shortage. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-dec-26-me-47674-story.html

Gantert, T., Apel, E., & Rowland, B. (2022, July 18). Los Angeles’ $600,000 fire captain and 86 firefighters made more than $400,000 in 2021. The Center Square. https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/los-angeles-600-000-fire-captain-and-86-firefighters-made-more-than-400-000-in/article_ca6b4cbc-06a8-11ed-9919-679807fe6e61.html

Hicks, J. (2022, April 1) Overtime – Too much of a good thing? The Fireman’s Grapevine. Los Angeles Firemen’s Relief Association. https://www.lafra.org/overtime-too-much-of-a-good-thing/

ICMA & CPSA (2020) 21st Century Fire and Emergency Services. https://www.cpse.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/21st-Century-Fire-and-Emergency-Services-White-Paper-Final-07.15.20.pdf

Knight, S. (2019, March 12). Full time, part time, overtime: How to fill fire department vacancies. FireRescue1.com. https://www.firerescue1.com/fire-chief/articles/full-time-part-time-overtime-how-to-fill-fire-department-vacancies-uRC8dscpvRkfgRhN/

Patterson, P. D., & Robinson, K. (2018, October). Implementation Guidebook: 2018 Fatigue Management Guidelines for Emergency Medical Services. National Association of State EMS Officials. https://s3.amazonaws.com/ClubExpressClubFiles/157064/documents/Fatigue_in_EMS_Implementation_Guidebook_1551393887.pdf

Peterson, R. (2024, April). Employee Perceptions of Hours Worked in the Corona Fire Department. [Capstone research project, National Fire Academy]. U.S. Fire Administration. https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/pdf/efop/Robert-Peterson-Employee-Perceptions-of-Hours-Worked-in-the-Corona.pdf

Smith, D. (2019, Nov 6) L.A. firefighter banked $360,010 in overtime pay in one year, city audit finds. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-06/lapd-lafd-audit-overtime-city-controller

Williams, E. (2007 Aug 29). Paramedic Coded Assign Hire to End Sept 9. Battalion 14 News & Information (dormant rss feed).