# How long the engine takes

> Two minutes separates the fastest borough from the slowest.

- Category: Crime
- Cadence: monthly
- Status: Published on a monthly cadence.
- Dataset key: `fire-response`
- Source: [London Fire Brigade](https://data.london.gov.uk/publisher/lfb)
- Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0 — [terms](https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/)
- Canonical page: [https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes](https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes)
- Machine-readable record: [https://londongraph.com/data/how-long-the-engine-takes](https://londongraph.com/data/how-long-the-engine-takes)

## Methodology

Median seconds from call to the first fire engine arriving, per borough, across every incident since January 2024. Median rather than mean, because a handful of very long attendances would move an average somewhere no borough recognises. Calls where no engine was sent — advice given over the phone, or a duplicate call to an incident already being attended — carry no attendance time and are excluded rather than counted as instant. The brigade's own target is a first engine within six minutes.

## Visualisations

- [Borough map](https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes): Compare median first-engine attendance time by borough; raw calls without an attendance are excluded.
- [Borough ranking](https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes?view=ranking): Read exact borough medians and the underlying attendance sample size.
- [First vs second pump](https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes?view=first-second): Compare first- and second-pump median attendance times for boroughs with at least 100 valid records.
- [Station grounds](https://londongraph.com/g/how-long-the-engine-takes?view=station-ground): Compare incident volume recorded against each station ground; details retain the median first-pump response sample. Caveat: Station ground is the incident geography recorded by LFB, not necessarily the station from which a pump was deployed.

## Citation guidance

Attribute the original publisher named above and identify LondonGraph as the visualisation and methodology layer. Do not describe live values as a historical census, and do not present placeholder values as observations.