Public Records

Fire incident/investigation reports are not always available upon demand, as the incident may still be an open investigation. If this is the case, an incident summary will be available to the property owner, person who sustained loss/injury as a result of the fire, or agent representing either (such as an insurance company) per California Government Code §6254(f). Usually the summary will contain enough information for the purpose of processing a claim with an insurance company.

Should the report subsequently be closed and deemed non-criminal the full report will be released to the requestor at no additional cost. It should be noted that personal and medical protected information will be redacted from these reports prior to release. Any fire incident/investigation deemed criminal full reports will not be released without a subpoena.

OFFICIAL & AUTHORIZED AGENCIES, please complete a Request for Non-Releasable Reports Form for these types of records.

Please note that any information regarding patient documents are protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The release of these documents is restricted to:

1.) the patient;
2.) a parent or guardian of minor;
3.) a person with the Power of Attorney; and/or
4.) by a court-issued subpoena.
** Proof of identity is required.

Please complete a Medical Records Request Form for these types of records.

To secure Fire and Life Safety Inspections and Violations documents (often used for the purpose of Environmental Site Assessments for properties) the requestor must be able to provide the OCFA with the property’s full street address and city. Use of “in the area of or cross streets” is not specific enough for us to locate responsive documents. Please complete a Property Records Request Form for these type of records.

These documents are also referred to as “Community Right to Know Requests.” Please complete the CRTK Request Form.

Building plans are copy righted documents that require permission from the architect. You will need to submit a Licensed Professional Release Request Form in addition to your Property Records Request Form

Building plans are copy righted documents that require permission from the architect. You will need to submit a Licensed Professional Release Request Form in addition to your Property Records Request Form

Per OCFA’s Retention Schedule, we maintain 9-1-1 audio recording for 100 days, so time is of the essence if you are requesting a 9-1-1 audio recording of an incident. Our dispatch staff will conduct a search for the call, and if located and releasable (sometimes the police or District Attorney’s office will deem the audio confidential, if tied to a criminal investigation); the audio will be provided as a WAV file, which can be listened to on a computer.

Court-issued requests for OCFA employees to provide recorded depositions or testimony during court trials or copies of non-redacted business records that are returned directly to the court or process server are subpoenas.

The subpoena should be accompanied by a records deposit check in the amount per California Government Code §68096.1 and 68097.2. The subpoena should be served to the Clerk of the Authority Office during normal business hours.

As a public agency, we are required to comply with the Political Reform Act. The Fair Political Practices Commission “FPPC” is the agency who oversees compliance. While there are several FPPC records maintained by the OCFA, the primary form of interest to the public is usually the Statements of Economic Interest (FPPC Form 700) used to identify and disclose any potential conflicts of interest.

If you require copies, the costs are minimal and set by the FPPC per California Government Code § 81008. Any documents 5+ years old are subject to a retrieval cost, which is also set by the FPPC. Please complete the Public Records Request form to request copies and/or view documents.

Retention of OCFA emails is two years. Retrieval would require programming to extract them from the server. You will be requested to provide additional information to assist staff in programming the server search, such as date range, email recipient, sender, and subject or key words.

There is a fee associated with this service per the Board-adopted Fee Schedule, and can take additional time to review and release dependent on scope of request.

In the past, there has been some confusion regarding Work Papers of Auditors. Work papers of auditors are not available to the entity that it audits as they contain propriety information into the auditor’s process. Working papers are the confidential property of the auditor. These documents are not records owned by the OCFA; however, the end product “the audit report” is available on the web.

If your specific request type is not identified above, please use the PRR Form provided for making your request.

On occasion, members of the public may want to be provided with additional information by the field personnel who responded to the incident. The OCFA does not allow interviews with our staff without the use of a court-issued subpoena to depose them. This practice is for your protection and the protection of our staff. There are no exceptions to this practice.

OCFA understands and respects the urgency associated with commercial media inquiries, media personnel are encouraged to directly contact our Corporate Communications for assistance with their requests for information or documents at (714) 573-6200.

For urgent “breaking news incident” inquires during normal business hours, please phone us at (714) 573-6200 or for after-hours media phone inquiries (714) 357-7782. We always strive to provide you with the latest and releasable information.

If we are not immediately available to pick-up your call, please leave us your name, media agency, location of incident, and brief message. We will return your call as time allows and request your respect and consideration in allowing us to execute our mission in the protection of life and property.