Major problems with FDNY and Cal Fire and London FD

[Peteri Szerlagi]

we have spoken about London FD before - lets expand on this thought

London UK FD has 100 stations housing 150 pumpers - they have 50
stations with 2 pumpers and they have 50 stations with 1 pumper - if
they moved to an organization with 150 stations with 1 pumper each -
their costs would be level - but their response times would drop by
33%

(the drop would be 33% if I am doing my math correct - I look at it
this way - they have 100 stations now - if they go to 150 stations,
then the number of stations has increased by 50 - they have to cover
600 square miles - 600 / 100 = 6 - 600 / 150 = 4 - the number of
square miles each station would have to cover would drop from 6 to 4 -
2 is one third of 6)

Cal Fire has 237 state stations and 350 state engines (per wikipedia)
- this tells us that 50% of the stations have 2 state engines - if Cal
Fire switched to 350 stations with 1 engine per station - their
response times would drop by 33% - same as London FD - because the
math would work the same way

Manhattan FD (part of FDNY) has 49 stations with 43 engines, 32
ladders, 1 squad, and 1 rescue - serving 1.5 million people - if they
increased the number of stations to 77 (by placing one six man quint
in each station), then the number of stations would increase by 57% -
so their response times should drop by 57%

Actually - Manhattan does not need 6 man companies - their
neighborhoods are no more dangerous than other major cities in the USA
- they just have more of the denser neighborhoods and more of the
highrises

So Manhattan has 77 companies of 6 people each - that is a total of
462 people on duty - divided by 4 is 114 - so Manhattan could be
operating 114 four man quints - so they could reduce their response
times by 43%

For big highrise fires - they would probably need to send half of the
units to the fire via subway or uber - otherwise there would be a sea
of useless quints at the scene - maybe 1 or 2 police buses could carry
all of the firefighters