New York City’s emergency response times have more than doubled over the last decade, according to a new report by the New York City Comptroller.
New Yorkers facing life-threatening situations have to wait four minutes longer than in 2016 as the response time for FDNY ambulances has risen from nine minutes 35 seconds to 13 minutes nine seconds, the report found. The average response time to non life-threatening emergencies has more than doubled from 13 minutes 45 seconds in 2015 to 28 minutes 33 seconds over the same period.
And response times are one minute and 48 seconds longer for life-and-death situations than last year.
The response times are getting worse, the report stated, because there are fewer emergency medical technicians to call upon. Fire Department EMTs are being forced out of the profession due to stagnating wages amid the high cost of living in New York, it found.
“These response times are completely unacceptable and they are only getting worse,” City Councilmember Joann Ariola said in a statement to The Sun. “A solution needs to be hammered out immediately, because every day the lives of New Yorkers are at risk.”
In the last seven years, “approximately 4,300 EMTs and paramedics left their titles” according to the report — an attrition rate more than double that of the firefighters they work with. While the Fire Department of the City of New York counts 8,170 firefighters on staff, the department currently has just 2,540 EMTs.
At the same time, the number of calls is growing, further stretching their numbers.
While first-year firefighters earn just over $54,000, the fire department’s EMTs start on under $44,000. The Comptroller’s office is recommending that EMTs are paid the same as firefighters to staunch the loss of emergency medical workers.
Boosting EMT pay to match firefighters would cost New York City taxpayers $289 million per year, or $1.23 billion for the next EMT union contract, covering 2023 to 2027.
Representatives for the Mayor’s Office did not immediately respond to a request to questions about whether the city would pick up the bill or not. The news comes as recent poll numbers suggest the mayor has not met his promise to lower New York’s soaring cost of living. A forthcoming survey by Honan Strategy Group has found that 46 percent of respondents said they were likely to leave the city in the next five years due to affordability concerns.
“The Department is currently engaged in a challenging period of increasing response times,” FDNY spokesperson Amanda Farinacci said in a statement to The Sun. “We know this is unacceptable and we are working tirelessly to reverse this trend.”
Some of the cost to pay EMTs more “could potentially be offset by operational savings” including less overtime pay and reduced training costs from retaining more workers, according to the report.
The New York Fire Department responds to significantly more medical emergencies than fires. In fiscal year 2026 the FDNY handled approximately 25,000 fires, but dispatched ambulances to more than 1.1 million medical emergencies.
The frequency of emergencies also appears to be increasing, with fire department EMTs answering 22.9 percent more life-threatening calls last year than in 2015.
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