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LOS ANGELES () — Los Angeles firefighters have repeatedly warned that rising call volumes and chronic understaffing are slowing their response times, and new data shows one major driver — encampment fires.
Every time the L.A. Fire Department responds to a blaze, crews must file a report and mark whether it was “Homeless or Encampment Related.” A records request for every such fire since 2020 returned a staggering total — more than 75,000 incidents.
The numbers fluctuate month-to-month, but the trend is unmistakable. In 2020, LAFD logged 7,165 homeless-related fires.
From January through mid-December 2025, that number climbed to 16,982, an average of 46 fires every day in the city of Los Angeles.
Most of these fires are small and quickly extinguished, but some spread with devastating consequences.
Last month, a Larchmont family lost their home and their two dogs after a fire they believe was started by squatters next door.
“I spoke to LAPD to kick them out and they did nothing, and my house burned and my dogs are dead,” homeowner Jonathan Galicia said in the aftermath.
For residents like Sidney Johnson in Westlake, the fires have become routine. Palm trees near his apartment, including those by nearby schools, are charred from repeated fires.
7 On Your Side asked Johnson if he had ever seen school age children walking by any of these fires.
“Our building contains an after-school program,” said John. “So that answers the question. Yes.”
Tony Brown runs the after-school program HOLA, short for Heart of Los Angeles, in Westlake.
“My concern is that one of our kids, one of our family members get seriously injured and we’re not just doing putting out the fire, but even worse we’re carrying them away in paramedics,” said Brown.
Encampment fires can be explosive, injuring both unhoused residents and firefighters. In 2024, an LAFD firefighter had to have an ear surgically reattached after an explosion at an Encino encampment.
“Typically, we’ll see combustible metals, flammable liquids, gasoline, diesel, and a lot of times these lithium-ion batteries,” LAFD Battalion Chief Joel Purma “So, it’s inherently dangerous for ourselves as well as the public.”
Purma oversees Fire Station 46 in South L.A., which has responded to 78 fires in just five years at a single encampment beneath the Harbor Freeway on King Boulevard, the location with the most encampment fires in the city, according to data provided to 7 On Your Side.
An ambulance had to be sent to each one of those calls, leaving firefighting EMTs farther away to respond to nearby medical calls.
“These stations are busy as could be right now,” said Purma. “And to add all these additional calls, it’s definitely tough.”
The LAFD says that’s how response times get driven up. LAFD officials say this is exactly how response times get pushed higher. When one station is tied up at an encampment fire, engines and ambulances from other stations must cover their area, slowing the entire system. Nationally, fire departments aim to arrive in under four minutes.
LAFD averages more than five minutes for structure fires and over seven minutes, 30 seconds for EMS calls.
The data doesn’t show us how serious the fire was, but it does break it down by type. The vast majority of these fires over the past five years have been listed as rubbish fires, but not all — 1,264 were some sort of building or structure fire, 1,904 were marked as a vehicle or RV fire and nearly 2,000 were listed as some sort of brush, grass or wildfire.
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