A consultant's report says Big Bear Fire Authority is understaffed and its governance agreement is broken

A fire services consulting firm presented stark findings to the Big Bear Fire Authority board in January, warning that the agency serving Big Bear Valley faces simultaneous shortfalls in how fast crews can reach an emergency and how many personnel arrive when they do — while the legal agreement holding the whole operation together has never been meaningfully updated since it was written.

The presentation, delivered January 21, 2026 by Citygate Associates, was described as a preliminary briefing. No final report has been released, and the Fire Authority's leadership, its elected board members, firefighter representatives, and San Bernardino County Fire have not yet responded publicly to the findings.

The staffing gap

The core problem identified by Citygate is personnel. The Fire Authority currently fields only three crews per shift, totaling nine on-duty firefighters across all three stations^[1]. Best-practice standards for a single-family house fire — the most common serious emergency — call for 15 to 16 crew members on scene within 11 minutes and 30 seconds of a 911 call^[1]. The consultant put it plainly: "The Fire Authority has both a speed of response and weight of response challenge."^[1]

Response time data from roughly 7,400 fire and EMS incidents over three years show the department-wide 90th-percentile response time averaging 11 minutes and 4 seconds — just inside that 11:30 benchmark on paper, but with significant variation by location^[1]. Station 282 in Big Bear City was the slowest, averaging 11 minutes and 48 seconds at the 90th percentile over the same period^[1]. That means one in ten calls to that station took nearly 12 minutes from the moment someone dialed 911 to when crews arrived.

The agency handled 3,567 incidents in 2024–25. Nearly 68% were emergency medical calls; actual fire calls made up less than 2%^[1]. More concerning to the consultants: simultaneous calls — two or more active incidents at once — occurred 33% of the time, and that rate is climbing^[1]. With only nine personnel on duty at any moment, overlapping emergencies stretch the department thin quickly.

The valley's visitor economy adds to that pressure. Snow Summit and Bear Mountain together generated 391 incidents in 2024–25 — 11% of the annual total^[1]. Ambulance billing data showed that 34% of all transports in FY 2024, or 914 calls, involved visitors from outside the area^[1]. Locals fund the department, but a substantial share of the workload comes from people passing through.

The review also noted that 48 to 60 percent of housing in the combined service area was built before 1979^[1] — older construction that burns faster and resists suppression less effectively, compounding the weight-of-response gap.

A governance agreement that hasn't kept up

The Fire Authority is a joint powers authority (JPA) shared between the Big Bear Lake Fire Protection District and the Big Bear City Community Services District. Citygate called its founding agreement "one of the least detailed JPAs we have ever seen," noting it was never updated after formation and lacks cost-sharing policies, deployment standards, fiscal reserves, or any mechanism for either partner to increase its own service level^[1].

The financial split is the most pressing structural flaw. Both agencies currently contribute equally — 50/50 — but Big Bear City CSD serves about 70.69% of the combined service area's population (12,520 residents) compared to the Fire Protection District's 5,192^[1]. The consultants called the equal split "unrealistic and not sustainable over time."^[1]

Current revenues, Citygate found, cannot support adding any staff or services. At the same time, the report warns that the existing number of frontline fire and EMS positions cannot be reduced if the Fire Authority is to remain a viable independent agency^[1].

What comes next — and what's still unknown

The consultant's preliminary recommendations include restructuring the Fire Authority's board to two seats for each partner agency plus one at-large seat, and evaluating whether both member agencies should dissolve the JPA and fold into San Bernardino County Fire^[1]. The alternative is to stay independent and substantially rewrite the JPA.

These are preliminary findings, not decisions. The Fire Authority board, Fire Chief, both partner agencies, and any labor representatives have yet to weigh in publicly on the cost-sharing changes, staffing proposals, or the consolidation option. A final Citygate report has not been released. Residents can follow developments through the Big Bear Fire Authority board agenda postings, where the full briefing materials were made available.