Effect of fire department response time on fire damage in the Netherlands

Fire department response times are often used as a measure of their performance, even though its influence on the outcome is not well understood. In this study, we investigate the effect of the response time on the final damage to a building after a fire. We use a partial proportional odds model to measure how one extra minute of response time influences the probability of the damage exceeding a certain threshold, using data on building fires in the Netherlands from 2018 to 2022. Our results show that the probability of large damage increases almost linearly with the response time. As a rule of thumb, the probability of large damage increases with an average of 1% with each additional minute of response time. Furthermore, to minimize the probability of total loss each minute after a response time of about 10 min becomes increasingly more valuable.