Long Beach firefighter Phillip Hanlen remembers a 911 call he responded to for a grandmother attending her granddaughter’s birthday party. When they arrived the grandmother had a dangerously fast pulse and was in need of a paramedic, but his ambulance didn’t have one on board, and all other rescue ambulances were busy.
Hanlen and his team waited for 20 minutes while the grandmother’s family pleaded with them to do something. By the time a paramedic arrived, she had passed away.
“These are calls that happen everyday, situations that happen all the time in Long Beach,” Hanlen said. “If you want to know what keeps us up at night and what haunts us, it’s the ‘what if?’ calls. What if we had a rescue there within those first critical moments?”
At the Long Beach City Council meeting Tuesday night, Hanlen and over 50 other Long Beach firefighters and paramedics told similar stories. Their solution was simple: the City needs more ambulances, rescues and paramedics.
“With your support, those ‘what if’ moments could transform into successful outcomes instead of tragedies,” Hanlen said.
Firefighters on Tuesday asked the City to extend its pilot program Rescue 2 Peak Load Unit, which added a paramedic rescue unit to the downtown area. The pilot program started last year with a 12-hour ambulance shift seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. This year the program was cut to three days a week.
Over 50 firefighters and paramedics attended the meeting to ask for the Rescue 2 Peak Load Unit to be extended to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as well as structural funds for the unit to become permanent.
The Long Beach City Council unanimously approved a plan that funds the Rescue 2 Peak Load Unit for the remainder of the year. City staff will return in two weeks to discuss the possibility of funding the unit for 2026 and beyond.
However, firefighters and paramedics echoed that this is still not enough to cover the city.
Fire Department Chief Duncan Buchanan said that Long Beach needs “at a minimum” 11 paramedic units running 24-hour shifts. Not including the Rescue 2 Peak Load Unit, the city has nine. According to staff reports, the national average for a city is 21,000 residents per rescue unit. Long Beach is at 55,000 residents per rescue unit.
“I can say from the bottom of my heart, I’m glad my family does not live in the city of Long Beach,” said a firefighter who identified herself as Katherine. “Even though I’m confident in the skill set of my brothers and sisters, we’re fighting an uphill battle. It is not a rare occurrence for our city to run out of ambulances, it happens every single day.”
How Understaffed is the Fire Department, and What Does That Mean?
From 2010-2013, Long Beach lost 62 of its Fire Department positions due to cuts in public safety funding. Since then, Measure A funds have helped restore 30 of those positions. Now, the city has a total of 27 fire engines and nine rescue units, with a total of 21 paramedics on staff daily.
The Fire Department now has 128 employees full-time, but on average they are forced to work extra shifts seven times a month. This has led to fatigue across the department, leading to one incident in 2023 where two Fire Department employees fell asleep at the wheel while responding to a call.
This led to the creation of the Rescue 2 Peak Load Unit. The department also launched the Paramedic Assessment Unit Fire Engine model, which expands the ranks that can serve as paramedics in an ambulance to include fire captains with active paramedic certifications.
Long Beach’s reputation of being understaffed and underfunded has made it harder to hire new firefighters as well as keep employees, said supervisor Bryan Vanderwall. He added that other departments offering better salaries, schedules and working conditions make them a more attractive destination.
“Current employees are working excessive hours, leading to fatigue, increased risk of illness and injury, and as a supervisor this is what keeps me up at night, that our overworked employees make mistakes,” Vanderwall said.
The pilot programs in 2024 were aimed at helping ease the workload for ambulance rescues 1, 3, 4 and 10, which are the units in Downtown. While there was a 4% increase in calls from 2023-24, the Rescue 2 Peak Load Unit responded to 2,988 calls last year, drastically aiding the other units. The Rescue 2 Unit not only helps the downtown area, but improves citywide ambulance availability, Buchanan said.
As a result, the number of “out of service” incidents, when no rescue ambulance is available in a medical emergency for five or more minutes, dropped from 167 incidents in 2023 to 42 incidents in 2024. Out of service incidents can be deadly for someone in need of immediate medical attention.
Rescue ambulances respond to a number of scenarios that a firetruck unit cannot assist in, such as a heart attack or cardiac arrest, a seizure, a severe allergic reaction, blood loss and more. Chief Buchanan emphasized that though the drop in incidents is a positive sign, Long Beach should never be out of paramedic services.
The first response to an out of service incident is to call into neighboring cities for assistance, such as Carson or Lakewood. Firefighter Corey Barnett explained that this is not sustainable, as it endangers residents in those cities.
“This is not a debate about comfort or convenience. This is about safety for us, and for the people we serve, the very people you represent,” said firefighter Lamont Nguyen. “Every delay, every gap in resources, every moment we are stretched too thin puts our community’s lives at risk. Make no mistake, we refuse to fail this city, it’s not in our DNA. We refuse to let our community down, but we cannot do it alone.”
How Much Does a Rescue Unit Cost?
To keep Rescue Peak Load Unit 2 going for the remainder of 2025, as well as restoring it to seven days a week, the cost is roughly $420,000. The City is pulling one-time funds from its $2.3 million in surplus funds from the 2024 fiscal year budget.
For 2026, the seven-day 12-hour unit would cost $1.23 million in personnel costs. To raise the shift to 24 hours like all other units as the department is requesting, it would cost roughly $2 million.
Structural funding was recommended for the Rescue 2 Unit, meaning it would become a part of the Fire Department’s budget going forward. Three options for funding were presented:
- Measure A: Once the voter-approved Measure A increase goes through, this can be considered for one of many public safety enhancements. Mayor Rex Richardson said the City does not know when they will begin receiving updated Measure A funds.
- FY 2026 Budget: The City can review revenue sources in the 2026 budget, or take funds away from other allocations.
- Revenue Sources: The City can try to find new revenue sources throughout the year that can go towards the Fire Department.
City Manager Tom Modica said the city will have to make “sacrifices” to fund the rescue unit, taking away from other projects. Long Beach is anticipating a $30 million deficit going into next year, increasing to $61 million over the next few years.
The voter-approved Measure LB sales tax will help to cover $15 million of this, Modica said, as well as Measure A once they begin receiving funds from the increase. He added that next week the rent at the temporary Fire Station 9 building is going to increase, and the replacement station being built is estimated to cost $30 million.
From 2017-2025, the Long Beach Fire Department (LBFD) has received $95 million in structural Measure A funds, and another $52 million in one-time funding for academies, fire stations and various infrastructure projects.
“I can’t recall a time in my 10 years with the Long Beach Fire Department where this gesture of solidarity was requested, let alone answered. In my opinion, it speaks to the sincerity and severity of our stance,” said a LBFD employee who identified himself as Ryan. “[…] I pray that this request doesn’t fall upon deaf ears and extends beyond our need for Rescue 2 because candidly, we need it.”
The Budget Oversight Committee will explore ways to permanently fund Rescue 2 Unit and report back to the city council in two weeks.
