09/29/2026
Over the Parker administration's first 1,000 days, the City has made a sustained investment in public safety, and the Philadelphia Fire Department has turned that investment into faster, stronger service. Capital and equipment funding reopened Ladder 11 in 2024 and Engine 6 in 2025, replaced a decades-old dispatch system with modern, more accurate software, and put new engines, ladders and command vehicles into the fleet. The result is measurable: average engine response time has dropped from 6.67 minutes to 6.02 minutes so far this year, ahead of the City's 6.65-minute target. The Mayor's FY27 budget carried that commitment forward with additional investment in Fire, and the Department put it to work on the street, graduating new classes of firefighters and EMS providers and pushing smoke alarms into the highest-risk homes in the city through a GIS-targeted program that cut the installation backlog by more than 85 percent.
The Mayor's approach to public safety, built on prevention, intervention and enforcement, has shaped how the Department works alongside its City partners. PFD has joined Police, Sanitation and Homeless Services in coordinated operations in Kensington, partnered with the Office of Public Safety on Naloxone in Black to put lifesaving overdose training into neighborhoods, and modernized its EMS system so that the most critical calls get advanced life support faster while lower-acuity calls are matched to the right resource. When Philadelphia hosted the World Cup, the Semiquincentennial and MLB All-Star Week, the Department planned and staffed every day of it. Every one of those results traces back to a City that chose to invest in the people who answer the call.
