Raleigh fire isn’t sending enough firefighters fast enough to respond to 911 calls
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Raleigh Fire meets national response time standards in only 54% of 911 calls.
- City stations fall short on staffing and equipment levels for serious emergencies.
- A 25-year improvement plan with $808M cost includes station moves and new hires.
The Raleigh Fire Department isn’t sending enough firefighters fast enough to meet national standards, a new city report has found..
Raleigh Fire meets the National Fire Protection Association’s standards for arriving on the scene only about half (54%) of the time.
“What does that look like to Mrs. Smith who’s having a crisis,” asked Greg Grayson, chief officer for North Carolina Fire Chief Consulting. “Her kitchen is on fire. Or her husband’s collapsed on the floor? How long does it take for that first unit to arrive?”
Fire departments want to try meeting the NFPA standards about 90% of the time. But none of the city’s stations does, according to the report.
Fire Station 1 covers downtown and topped the city’s stations at 81%. The lowest was station zone 23, which covers northwest Raleigh, at 31%.
The association’s standards are:
- Alarm answered: 95% of alarms should be answered within 15 seconds
- Alarm processed: 90% of alarms should be processed within 64 seconds
- Turnout: 90% of fire calls should take 80 seconds for firefighters to get in their turnout gear. It’s 60 seconds for EMS calls.
- Travel time: 90% of calls should see their first unit arrive within 240 seconds or 4 minutes.
Raleigh firefighters are late because they are busy on other calls, there is a “long alarm handling time” and it takes a long time to travel to the call, according to the report.
The city also is not sending enough firefighters when there are “serious emergencies” like a building fire.
For low- or moderate-risk calls, 26 firefighters should respond within 10 minutes 26 seconds. For high-risk calls, 39 firefighters should respond within 12 minutes 30 seconds. The Raleigh Fire Department meets those standards 48% of the time.
“Everything about fire response is time driven” Grayson said. “It’s very time sensitive. Time is important. Why? Because someone having a cardiac arrest, their chance of survival drops about 10% every minute. Why? Fire doubles in size at about every minute. Its size and timing is very, very important. So that’s why we measure effectiveness and efficiency.”
Community members shouldn’t feel the “fire department is less than the best,” said City Manager Marchell Adams-David.
“And so for [The News & Observer], whoever is covering this story, I don’t want the headlines to be we’re an F and how do we get to a D,” she said at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. “We have an amazing fire department, and while we may be at 54% of what the standard is, we put fires out and we provide life saving services to this community every day and every night.”
The report makes recommendations for the short, medium and long term to improve the Raleigh Fire Department. The estimated cost for these recommendations over 25 years is $808 million.
Station improvements
These stations should be relocated:
- Station 23, 8313 Pinecrest Road,
- Station 9, 4465 Six Forks Road,
- Station 8, 5001 Western Blvd.
These stations should be rebuilt:
- Station 10, 2711 Sanderford Road
- Station 17, 4601 Pleasant Valley Road
Raleigh should also consider building four new stations: two in future southeast and northeast Raleigh as the city grows through annexation, and two in the Wilders Grove and Neuse Crossroads areas for current coverage gaps.
Some of these new stations will be “dual facilities” with the Raleigh Police Department to cut costs.
New trucks and staff
It takes a ladder truck at least six minutes to get to any call in the city. Raleigh could reduce that time by 25 seconds by adding two ladder trucks and optimizing where ladder trucks are stationed.
Raleigh is below the industry minimum for staffing, and the report also recommends adding 18 staff members.
“This inadequate staffing creates a cycle where stress, burnout, and injury-related leave create coverage gaps that can only be filled with overtime hours — a costly approach that risks worsening the underlying causes of absence,” according to the report.
The city’s should maintain higher staffing in the future.
“I was really looking at this because our highest amount of overtime is spent in fire,” said Council member Christina Jones. “And so when I know that and I look and we say 18 (new employees) is 18 people really going to solve us and bring us from essentially an F for both standards?”
This story was originally published July 3, 2025 at 3:33 PM with the headline "Raleigh fire isn’t sending enough firefighters fast enough to respond to 911 calls."
