Every year, fire takes thousands of lives and destroys property worth billions of dollars. Firefighters are one of the more well-rounded and versatile emergency task forces in the world. Firefighters are called to serve a civic duty which is to protect citizens in time of crisis. But sometimes they cannot reach their ultimate goals because of some barriers such as the distance from a fire station to the incident location is far, insufficient fire-fighting equipment or traffic jam to the location of fire. Taking the cue from here, this study provides an analysis of turn out time and response time of the Penang State Fire and Rescue Department. During two year study, the researchers identify Perai (16.12%) and Jalan Perak (16.72%) stations as having the most number of rescue cases. Fire occurrences in the months of January, February and March are the highest while December has the lowest. In tandem, the percentage of house fireis higher than the other two categories (forest fire and machinery fire). Most of the stations are able to perform their duties on time, however, Kepala Batas, Tasek Gelugor and Teluk Bahang stations could not meet turn out time on due time. Bandar Perda, Balik Pulau and Bukit Mertajam stations show lower percentage of response time on due time for joint analysis. The analysis shows that 65.15% of the cases occur during day time rather than night time. There exists a positive relationship between turnout time and response time for the year 2010 and 2011 jointly. Also there are significant differences among the mean response times for the reference year. © 2014 Asian Network for Scientific Information.
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