Grand Jury: San Diego Fire-Rescue Fails Required Safety Inspections at Thousands of Buildings; Union Blocks Civilian Inspectors

A San Diego County Grand Jury report published Friday finds the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department has failed to comply with state-mandated annual fire safety inspections for years, completing just 58 percent of required inspections in the 2026 fiscal year amid a union contract that bars the city from hiring civilian fire inspectors.

The report, titled "Playing with Fire: The High Stakes of Low Inspection Completion," examined SDFD's Community Risk Reduction Division and identified barriers to reaching full compliance with Senate Bill 1205, the 2018 state law enacted after the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland killed 36 people.

SB 1205 requires every city and county fire department to conduct annual fire safety inspections of all public and private schools, hotels, motels, and multifamily dwellings with three or more units. Fire agencies may collect fees to recover inspection costs and must report compliance to an administering authority such as a city council.

Three years of decline

According to the city's draft budget for fiscal year 2027, SDFD completed 58 percent of required SB 1205 inspections in FY2026 — down from 50 percent in FY2025 and 42 percent in FY2024, the Grand Jury report found.

In FY2025, SDFD completed 75 percent of required school fire inspections and just 47 percent of required hotel, motel, and multifamily dwelling inspections, the department told the Grand Jury. More than 4,300 residential properties and approximately 100 schools went uninspected that year.

An additional 700 properties the city is legally required to inspect are missing from the department's inspection database entirely — most of them multifamily buildings — because the database is outdated, the department acknowledged to the Grand Jury.

2010 audit still unaddressed

The Grand Jury noted that a 2010 city performance audit reached many of the same conclusions. That audit found SDFD was not completing all required inspections of hazmat facilities and high-rises and that its data systems for tracking inspections were "outdated, inaccurate and incomplete."

"The lack of timely inspections, reliable data systems and practices, increases the risk of fire resulting in the loss of property or worse, the loss of life," the 2010 audit stated.

Sixteen years later, the department has not fully implemented the audit's recommendations, the Grand Jury said. Some longtime department officials were unaware the 2010 audit existed.

"We were surprised that so little had been accomplished from the earlier audit report from 2010 and we were also surprised that the fire department hasn't come up with more creative ways of staffing," Grand Jury member Barry Levine said in an interview.

Union contract blocks civilians

SDFD has attributed the inspection backlog to chronic understaffing. But the Grand Jury identified another barrier: the firefighters union's memorandum of understanding with the city requires that all fire inspectors be sworn firefighters, prohibiting the hiring of civilian inspectors who are paid less.

Department leaders told the Grand Jury they would support changing that contract language. The union did not answer the Grand Jury's questions about doing so.

The Grand Jury also noted that much of inspectors' time is consumed by administrative work — tracking down property owners, scheduling inspections, and arranging routes — rather than performing actual inspections. It recommended hiring lower-cost administrative assistants to handle those tasks.

The report commended other local fire agencies, including Heartland, Chula Vista, and Oceanside, for producing detailed annual reports with inspection compliance data, and recommended SDFD publish a similar annual report ahead of each budget cycle.

What happens next

The Grand Jury made several recommendations: SDFD and the City Council should set a realistic timeline for reaching 100 percent SB 1205 compliance; the department should publish an annual compliance report broken down by occupancy category; school districts serving the city should review fire safety inspection reports annually by January 30, 2027; and the department should work with the county assessor and city treasurer to ensure the inspection inventory database is accurate.

The City Council, Mayor Todd Gloria, the County Board of Supervisors, and the county assessor are required to respond to the Grand Jury's recommendations within 90 days. The San Diego City Council's Public Safety Committee is scheduled to consider the proposed response at its meeting Wednesday, October 14.

A fire department spokesperson declined to comment on the Grand Jury report Monday.

The Independent Budget Analyst has already weighed in, agreeing with the Grand Jury on four points: that the lack of published compliance data reduces public awareness and support for the fire department; that civilian inspectors could help ease staffing shortages; that overtime and revised scheduling procedures are needed; and that firefighters should not be performing logistical scheduling and billing work.

The Grand Jury report, formally published Friday, is available on the San Diego County Grand Jury website.