# San Diego Fire-Rescue Response Times Lagging After 2019 Dispatch Change, City Audit Finds
A city audit released in March 2026 has found that a protocol change made by the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department (SDFD) back in 2019 has significantly slowed emergency response times — and may have cost lives.
The audit, conducted by the Office of the City Auditor, zeroed in on what's known as "turnout time" — the window between when a crew receives a dispatch call and when they actually leave the fire station. According to the findings, the average turnout time for SDFD crews is approximately 2 minutes and 54 seconds. That's nearly double the city's own standard of 1 minute 30 seconds to 2 minutes, and far above the national benchmarks of about 1 minute for emergency medical calls and 1 minute 20 seconds for fire responses.
For ambulance dispatches specifically, the numbers are even more alarming: crews waited an average of 4 minutes and 20 seconds before departing the station.
A 2019 Policy Change at the Root of the Problem
Auditors identified a 2019 dispatch protocol as a primary driver of the delays. Under that system, emergency calls are triaged before firefighters are allowed to begin their preparations to respond. The intent behind the change was reasonable — to cut down on unnecessary responses, reduce firefighter fatigue, and limit wear on fire engines. But the audit found that the tradeoff has come at a significant cost to response speed.
Those slower departures have cascaded into missed arrival time goals. The SDFD has failed to meet its standard of arriving on scene within 6 minutes and 30 seconds for three consecutive fiscal years — from FY2023 through FY2025 — across all nine of the city's council districts.
"Every Minute Counts"
The audit's most sobering finding is its assessment of what these delays may mean for residents in life-threatening emergencies. According to the report, every minute of delayed response can reduce a patient's chance of survival in a critical medical situation by 10%. The auditors concluded that these extended response times have likely resulted in the loss of lives.
Fire Chief Commits to Reform
Fire-Rescue Chief Robert Logan has agreed to implement all of the audit's recommendations within one year, according to reporting by the San Diego Union-Tribune. Those recommendations include annual reporting on each phase of the emergency dispatch process and establishing a standardized method for measuring turnout time.
Fire officials, while defending the 2019 triage system, also pointed to a separate contributing factor: a roughly 20% increase in 911 call volume in recent years that has not been matched by a proportional increase in staffing or fire stations.
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This story is based on a city audit released in March 2026 by the San Diego Office of the City Auditor.