  In 2020, California required San Francisco to consider equity in access to
resources such as housing, transportation, and emergency services as it
re-opened its economy post-pandemic. Using a public dataset maintained by the
San Francisco Fire Department of every call received related to emergency
response from January 2003 to April 2021, we calculated the response times and
distances to the closest of 48 fire stations and 14 local emergency rooms. We
used logistic regression to determine the probability of meeting the averages
of response time, distance from a fire station, and distance to an emergency
room based on the median income bracket of a ZIP code based on IRS statement of
income data. ZIP codes in the lowest bracket ($25,000-$50,000 annually)
consistently had the lowest probability of meeting average response metrics.
This was most notable for distances to emergency rooms, where calls from ZIP
codes in the lowest income bracket had an 11.5% chance of being within the
city's average distance (1 mile) of an emergency room, while the next lowest
probability (for the income bracket of $100,000-$200,000 annually) was 75.9%.
As San Francisco considers equity as a part of California's "Blueprint for a
Safer Economy," it should evaluate the distribution of access to emergency
services. Keywords: fire department, emergency medical services, emergency
rooms, equity, logistic regression
