AUSTIN, Texas — In a quarterly update to the Public Safety Commission at their Monday meeting, first responders with Austin police and fire departments shared statistics reflecting their response times to emergency calls.
The reports revealed some delays in response times.
Austin Fire Department Chief of Staff Rob Vires explained to commissioners that Districts 8 and District 6 had the longest average response times of slightly more than 10 minutes. Districts 9 and 3 had the shortest average response times at 8:39 and 8:57.
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Vires said that delayed response times can be due to a number of factors, including station location, types of calls, and simply, Austin's booming growth.
"As the city grows, so does our call volumes. There should be generally an uptick over the course of years, the trend, the up for the volume of calls," Viers said. "You see the larger response time and part of it is the density of traffic in all across town, and then the lack of density of fire station as you get away from the center of town."
Adding more firefighters to the department could also help. Vires said that the department is expected to welcome another class in October.
For Austin Police, statistics presented by Assistant Chief Joseph Chacon showed that the citywide target for highest-priority calls (P0) is 6:44, and for second-highest-priority calls (P1) is 8:39.
In January, the average response time for Austin Police P0 calls was 7:49, and for P1 it was 9:18. In February, the average response time for P0 calls was 7:36 and for P1 was 8:51. In March, those numbers grew for P0 at an average response time at 7:53, and 9:26 for P1 calls.
Chacon explained there are a few reasons for this including district size, staffing, and landmass.
"We have not been hitting our city-wide target for priority zeroes and priority ones, and there are some where we make it and some where we don't. It kind of averages out," Chacon said. "These council districts don't line up exactly with our patrol areas, so you may have different areas, different sectors that are responding within the same council district. Some of those sectors get a little busier than others and there may not be officers available. We'll have to call someone from another sector to come over and especially when you start pushing to west Austin, it's a large land mass."
Chacon said that there are currently 149 vacancies within the department, with the majority of those being in the patrol areas and that as a result, the overtime rate has accelerated.
However, something that could help: on Friday about 50 cadets are expected to graduate from the academy.
You can watch the May 6 Public Safety Commission in full here.
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