The numbers are not what Tamarac's Fire Department wants to see: 20 minutes in response to a 911 call in November, and more than 17 minutes to show to another call the very next day.
To improve response times to calls made from a district that includes Kings Point, the gated retirement enclave, Tamarac plans to build a fire station in the heart of that community.
The city aims to arrive to 911 calls in eight minutes or less, fire officials said.
It hits that benchmark almost 82 percent of the time in the zone framed to the west by the Sawgrass Expressway, to the north by Southgate Boulevard, to the east by Nob Hill Road and to the south by McNab Road.
Records of 911 calls made in 2016 of that zone show some callers were left waiting upward of 10 minutes. In rare cases, it took first responders 17 minutes or longer to arrive, records show.
Assistant Fire Chief Percy Sayles said the nearest fire station is on Hiatus Road, and with no direct road connecting Hiatus with Nob Hill, "you're behind the eight ball already."
The city's plan: move one of the city's ambulances from the Hiatus station to a new station within shouting distance of Kings Point itself in 2017.
The station, to be at first created from trailers, could be set up on Kings Point property at a parking lot, or at the city's Sports Complex.
There is no pricetag attached to the project yet.
Although the ambulance would not be reserved exclusively for Kings Point — it would serve the entire zone — the bulk of calls for emergency help often come from that area, officials said.
A review of seven of the longest-to-respond calls — all 14 minutes and 51 seconds or longer — show no deaths were reported, and the calls for service included falls without injury, one call of an unknown nature, and a resident locked out of a home.