Mayoral candidate Austin Beutner on Monday unveiled new campaign analysis that he says shows Los Angeles’ 911 system is sending paramedics to too many non-medical calls – slowing response for Angelenos experiencing life-threatening emergencies.
Speaking outside of Los Angeles Fire Department’s Station 63 in Venice, Beutner said L.A.’s median response times have risen to almost eight minutes, roughly a minute and a half slower than a decade ago.
“Today, there’s too much work for too few people – about five times as many calls as a generation ago for a department that’s about the same size,” he said.
Beutner attributed the delay not just to staffing or equipment shortages but to the way 911 calls are screened and dispatched. He said firefighters and paramedics are regularly dispatched to calls that are not medical emergencies–anything from leg cramps to someone asking for food or help turning off a fan—tying up crews trained for heart attacks and strokes.
“If they’re helping somebody whose fan needs to be turned off, they’re not reaching your home when your loved one’s having a heart attack,” he said.
Beutner proposed retraining dispatchers and creating a parallel line, similar to 2-1-1, that could route non-urgent calls to telemedicine providers, food banks or community groups, depending on the needs. That change alone, he said, could cut response times by “10 to 20 percent,” or roughly a minute depending on the neighborhood.
“We need to take the burden off of the fire department that’s being asked to do things that they’re not trained for,” he said. “That’s not the most effective use of the scarce resources we have.”
This publication asked both Mayor Karen Bass’s reelection campaign and the Los Angeles Fire Department about Beutner’s claims. Bass’s campaign spokesperson said the inquiry was forwarded to the city for response. An LAFD spokesperson said the request had been forwarded to LAFD administration for review, but did not provide additional information before press deadline on Monday.
The Los Angeles Fire Department has faced mounting strain in recent years, amid rising 911 call volumes — driven largely by medical emergencies and persistent staffing shortages despite a growing population. Los Angeles fields roughly 3,500 firefighters for a city of nearly 4 million residents. By comparison, San Francisco has more than 1,800 firefighters serving the city and surrounding communities, despite having less than half of L.A.’s population.
The January Palisades fire intensified debate over whether the city has adequately invested in LAFD’s capacity and planning. Concerns over fire preparedness later became a major point of conflict between Mayor Bass and former Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, contributing to the public fallout that ended with Crowley’s removal by Bass.
Beutner did not release the full methodology behind the comparison but said his team gathered data from publicly available sources, including the FireStat system.
His campaign website says the “national standard” is for an ambulance to arrive in under five minutes for most medical emergencies. In practice, there is no single national emergency medical services response time, and performance varies widely by city, call type and agency.
One of the most widely cited professional benchmarks is the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) 1710 standard, which guides career fire departments on how to staff and deploy emergency resources. NFPA 1710 sets a one-minute turnout time and recommends that a first responder or basic life-support unit arrive within four minutes for 90% of emergency medical incidents. For departments that provide advanced life support (ALS), the standard recommends ALS arrival within eight minutes for 90% of incidents.
But Beutner said the root issues extend beyond dispatching. He pointed to what he called “chronic underinvestment” in LAFD stations, equipment and personnel.
Monday’s announcement also continued a theme Beutner has emphasized since entering the race in October; that the January Palisades fire — which ignited while Mayor Karen Bass was in Ghana — exposed deeper failures in how Los Angeles prepares for and responds to crises.
Beutner said the city still lacks a full accounting of what happened on January 7, and again called for “a truly independent commission” to investigate the fire response.
“By truly independent, I mean upstanding members of the community, not politicians,” he said. “Public hearings. Ask questions, get the facts – from the Fire Department, from DWP, from other city officials, including the mayor and her team.”
Mayor Bass has called for a full investigation into Lachman fire, after reporting by the Los Angeles Times revealed that firefighters were instructed to leave a smoldering canyon days before flames reignited into the devastating Palisades fire.
“Why are we hearing about this from the media and not from City Hall officials?” Beutner said.
Beutner said he chose the Venice fire station because firefighters there told him that a significant share of their calls involve issues that are not medical emergencies.
“If you visit a station like this,” he said, “you learn that as many as 20% of their calls are not true medical emergencies.”
Beutner also promoted an app on his campaign website that allows residents to look up estimated emergency medical services respond times for their ZIP Codes.
Former LAUSD Superintendent Beutner entered the mayoral race in October. He is one of several challengers to Bass, who is also facing a challenge from housing advocate Rae Huang and the possibility of a renewed bid by developer Rick Caruso.