San Antonio’s emergency-response burden is not distributed evenly. Between January 1, 2024, and June 30, 2026, ZIP 78207 generated 41,825 distinct San Antonio Fire Department master incidents—nearly 18,700 more than the second-ranked ZIP and roughly 81 percent more volume.

The leading ZIP covers a broad section of the historic West Side, including neighborhood corridors associated with Prospect Hill, Avenida Guadalupe and communities immediately west of downtown. Its total represents 6.73 percent of all incidents that could be assigned to one consistent ZIP.

The next tier crosses the city: 78228 on the near Northwest and West sides; 78223 in the Southeast; 78227 near Lackland and Valley Hi; 78229 in the Medical Center; and 78216 along the North Central and airport corridor. The ranking therefore does not point to one simple geographic story. It identifies several different kinds of emergency-demand centers: historic residential neighborhoods, medical and commercial corridors, dense inner-city districts, and fast-growing outer areas.

What the neighborhood pattern reveals

The top 15 ZIPs account for just over half of the city’s ZIP-assigned incident volume. That concentration creates a practical planning question: are staffing, station placement, specialized units, prevention programs and hospital coordination aligned with the places generating the greatest recurring demand?

These are raw incident totals, not population-adjusted rates. A high-volume ZIP may be large, densely populated, commercially active, institution-heavy or visited by large numbers of nonresidents. The next analytical layer should compare incidents per 1,000 residents, daytime population, age structure, poverty, hospital locations, station coverage and land use before labeling any neighborhood unusually unsafe or underserved.

ZIP 78207 is the only top-ranked area in which the explicit EMS count exceeds the explicit Fire count: 15,524 EMS incidents compared with 13,558 Fire incidents, with another 12,743 records in the other-or-unclassified category. Several other leading ZIPs have especially large unclassified shares, which means the classification dictionary needs to be audited before the citywide Fire-versus-EMS mix is treated as final.

The complete top-30 neighborhood ranking

The table uses neighborhood shorthand to make ZIP-based findings more readable. ZIP boundaries can cross multiple communities, and a neighborhood can extend into more than one ZIP; the names below are contextual associations, not official boundary determinations.

What should happen next

The ranking is best understood as a demand map. It tells city leaders where SAFD master incidents accumulate, but it does not yet tell them whether response is fast enough, whether resources are proportionate, or whether residents face unequal risk.

The next public-accountability analysis should add median and 90th-percentile response seconds by ZIP, separate complete calendar years 2024 and 2025 from partial 2026, calculate population-adjusted rates, and compare the findings with station locations, council districts, age, disability, poverty, housing age and hospital access. That would move the discussion from “where are the most calls?” to “where is emergency demand greatest relative to people, place and available response capacity?”