Fire damage increases by US$2,400 for each additional minute of response time, New Zealand study finds

Fire damage increases at a rate of approximately US$2,400 for each minute it takes fire services to respond to a call, according to a study of fire service response times in New Zealand.
The Relationships Between Fire Service Response Time and Fire Outcomes, published in 2009 by Neil Challands of the New Zealand Fire Service, used data for approximately 27,500 fires in structures throughout New Zealand between July 2003 and June 2008.
The New Zealand Fire Service routinely collects data on the apparent state of the fire at the time the fire services arrive.
“The cost of damage increases with response time at the rate of approximately NZ$4,000 [US$2,400] per minute per fire,” the study found. “This relationship has great potential for determining the benefit/cost ratio from improved response.”
The study also found that calling in a fire using a mobile phone actually delayed the response time of fire services by an average of 15 seconds.
“…[E]mergency calls from cellular phones consistently take on average 15 seconds longer to locate the incident than for calls from landlines where there is already a known terminating address for the telephone line,” Challands writes in the study.
Based on the average annual number of fires called in using a cell phone (1,013), this would amount to additional damages each year of almost US$612,000.