Fire Department

The Los Angeles City Council passed a $7.2-billion budget Monday, voting to cut 400 unfilled city staff positions but putting off difficult decisions on layoffs, park funding and Fire Department resources. On a 15-0 vote, council members agreed to wait until January to determine whether layoffs are necessary, and which positions could be eliminated, saying that more study is needed. They took that step despite a warning from the city's top budget official that some of the revenue being used to balance spending isn't a sure thing.

The Los Angeles City Council passed a $7.2-billion budget Monday, voting to cut 400 unfilled city staff positions but putting off difficult decisions on layoffs, park funding and Fire Department resources. On a 15-0 vote, council members agreed to wait until January to determine whether layoffs are necessary, and which positions could be eliminated, saying that more study is needed. They took that step despite a warning from the city's top budget official that some of the revenue being used to balance spending isn't a sure thing.

The often-torturous process of opening a restaurant in Los Angeles got a little easier last week, as the city moved to streamline its notoriously cumbersome rules for setting up a food business. Citing cases in which it took up to two years for restaurants to get permission to open — so long that a downtown eatery planned during the economic boom debuted during the bust and failed soon after — city officials said new rules would cut the waiting and wrangling in half.

Emergency response times provided by Los Angeles fire officials to the public and City Hall leaders cannot be trusted because of problems with software used to prepare the numbers, according to a report by an expert assigned to audit the Fire Department's data analysis . The report called on the department to stop using the software until the problem is fixed and recommended an overhaul of the unit that analyzes statistics for Fire Chief...

Five children were killed Sunday morning when their townhouse in Carson erupted in flames and they were trapped inside. Three girls and a boy, ages 6 to 8, were found dead upstairs inside the two-story unit, and a 9-year-old girl later died at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles County fire officials said. The four adults who were home, including the victims' elderly grandparents, tried to rescue the children but were pushed back by smoke and flames, officials said.

In regard to your July 18 story on fire protection if the San Fernando Valley should succeed in breaking away from Los Angeles: Breaking up the L.A. Fire Department, one of the most efficient in the U.S., would be a disaster for the citizens of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Fire protection needs are different than in law enforcement--the need for quick move-ups for major fires is mandatory. When there is a high fire hazard, commanders move companies from the "flatlands" to the Valley for quick response.

In reaction to ongoing controversy over emergency response times, a Los Angeles city councilman on Friday called for full funding to be restored to the Fire Department, whose budget has been slashed by more than 15% over the last three years. The appeal from Councilman Paul Koretz came during a special council committee hearing in which Los Angeles Fire Chief Brian Cummings faced tough questions about how his department measures its responses to calls for help. Koretz said he was dismayed by recent revelations that the department for years overstated how fast it was arriving on the scene of medical emergencies.

The Los Angeles City Council made deep cuts to the Fire Department last year after being presented with data that overstated how quickly rescuers arrived at the scene of citizen calls for help. In presentations made by fire officials to council members as they considered reducing fire engines and ambulances at more than one-fifth of the city's stations, the department said first responders arrived at the scene of a medical emergency within five minutes nearly 80% of the time. Similar statistics were also included in a Fire Commission report to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The state Department of Forestry has awarded the city a $1,000 grant to buy radio dispatch equipment for the Fire Department.

The Orange County Fire Department is seeking volunteers for the department's Hand Crew Force. Composed of 10 to 15 volunteers, the crews assist firefighters at structure and brush fires, floods and other emergencies. Some of the duties include clearing undergrowth around brush or structure fires and filling and laying sandbags to protect property during floods. Volunteers will be paid for responding to emergency calls, and are not full-time employees of the department.

Mayoral campaign politics again spilled into a controversy over lagging Los Angeles Fire Department response times Tuesday as the City Council voted to launch yet another investigation into the agency's faulty data. The department has been under scrutiny since fire officials acknowledged last month that they have been releasing performance reports that made it appear that first responders were arriving at medical emergencies faster than they actually were. Tuesday's decision to hire outside experts was pushed by two mayoral contenders at the same time that a rival candidate, City Controller Wendy Greuel, has pressed her own audit of the department.

A Los Angeles Fire Department plan to put six ambulances back in service to help improve lagging response times amounts to less than a "Band-Aid" fix to the agency's needs, a City Council member said. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called for the ambulances to be restored to service last month after fire officials acknowledged that the time it takes rescuers to get to victims in medical emergencies had fallen below nationally accepted standards. Assistant Fire Chief David Yamahata on Monday told the council's Budget and Finance Committee that the six ambulances would begin operating Sunday.

Harder than it looks Re " Making connections ," Column One, March 21 Making connections by teaching elders to use computers is a wonderful idea. However, I seriously object to the "sensitivity training" given to the university students in preparation for their teaching experience. Simulations - using props such as earplugs, gloves, tape and diapers - do not provide a sense of the "lived experience" of being older. Many in the disability community reject these simulations as demeaning.

In reaction to ongoing controversy over emergency response times, a Los Angeles city councilman on Friday called for full funding to be restored to the Fire Department, whose budget has been slashed by more than 15% over the last three years. The appeal from Councilman Paul Koretz came during a special council committee hearing in which Los Angeles Fire Chief Brian Cummings faced tough questions about how his department measures its responses to calls for help. Koretz said he was dismayed by recent revelations that the department for years overstated how fast it was arriving on the scene of medical emergencies.

Seeking to bolster public confidence in the beleaguered Los Angeles Fire Department, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa late Thursday called on the City Council to dip into budget reserves to activate six more ambulances and ordered the appointment of a recognized public safety analyst to take charge of the agency's accounting of its performance. In a letter to the council, Villaraigosa characterized as "untenable" recent confusion over how fast fire units respond to emergencies. "We must take immediate steps to rectify it," he said.

Maybe I was beginning to suffer from smoke inhalation. All I know is that I started feeling faint at Tuesday's meeting of the Los Angeles Fire Commission right around the time LAFD Fire Chief Brian Cummings attempted, yet again, to explain mysterious discrepancies regarding emergency response times. You'd have been dizzy too, hearing about metrics, deployment models, projections and changing formulas. I knew 20 minutes into the meeting that if I fainted and fell over backward, and someone called 911, no one in the room could say for sure how long the projected or actual response might take or what formula would be used to compute it. I did learn at the meeting that when you call 911 for a fire or medical emergency, the call goes to the LAPD first.

All six of the city's fire stations will be open for public tours from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 11, Fire Service Day. Firefighting demonstrations, including rescues, will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Fire Department headquarters station, 321 E. Commonwealth Ave. The other stations offering demonstrations are located at 1732 W. Valencia Drive, 700 S. Acacia Ave., 3251 N. Harbor Blvd., 2555 Yorba Linda Blvd. and 1500 N. Gilbert St. Information: (714) 738-6500.

Los Angeles Fire Chief Brian Cummings drew more criticism Tuesday after he offered yet another explanation of how his agency has calculated and reported emergency response times to city officials. Speaking to the Fire Commission, Cummings said his department used computerized projections of response times - instead of actual performance data - in reports about pending budget cuts that were presented to the commission and City Council members last year. Using hypothetical models that assumed full staffing, the reports calculated that the Fire Department would have arrived on the scene of medical emergencies within five minutes nearly 80% of the time in 2008.

Much of Boston lost power Tuesday night after a three-alarm fire in a transformer sent noxious smoke billowing into the streets, officials said. The blaze, around the corner from the posh Back Bay Hilton, was reported at 6:27 p.m. Fire Department spokesman Steve MacDonald told the Boston Globe that it was unclear how the fire had started, but that to fight it firefighters had to shut off electricity to thousands of people. Affected areas included "Back Bay, Chinatown, the Theater District, Kenmore Square and parts of the South End," NStar utility spokesman Mike Durand said.