Manteca firefighters are arriving at emergency calls quicker despite an increase in calls. And nowhere is the improvement in response time better than in northwest Manteca where average response times plummeted by 2.5 minutes in 2014 down to 3.5 minutes. It’s all attributable to the opening of the city’s fourth fire station on Lathrop Road west of Union Road in September 2013 and the hiring of one additional firefighter.