A two-part series in the Boston Globe1 highlighted the “crisis” surrounding increasing fire department response times and reduced fire company staffing. The series suggested that the lives of both the public and firefighters were placed at increased risk because of declining investment in public fire services.
Sadly, important advances in fire safety and community risk management, arguably the first areas of any fire department budget to suffer cuts when fiscal conditions tighten, received no recognition. Although the statistically significant link between increased response times and fire deaths is hard to dispute, the fact that total U.S. fire incidents and deaths have fallen 13 and 20 percent, respectively, over the past 10 years for which data are available2 gets no mention whatsoever.
These dramatic declines have garnered the attention and respect of overseas observers,3 who now look to advances in U.S. fire safety technologies, particularly smoke alarms, domestic sprinkler systems, ignition-resistant home furnishings, and reduced-ignition-propensity cigarettes for answers to their own fire problems.
The Globe reports that the likelihood of dying in a fire increases by one-half of one percent for each one minute increase in response time when a fire department arrives in eight minutes or less. Yet the newspaper fails to mention that installing smoke alarms cuts in half the risk of dying in a fire.4
Public officials’ and citizens’ antipathy toward new fire service funding requests and apathy about fire risk are generally because of the fact that unwanted and dangerous fires remain rare events for most of them. Advances in product safety, improved safety requirements in building codes, rising living standards, and heightened health awareness have all helped embed positive fire safety factors into the lives of an increasing proportion of all Americans’ lives.
The fact is that fire disproportionately afflicts those in our communities who lie not only beyond the comfortable response time boundaries of our best-staffed and best-equipped fire stations but beyond the margins of our society as well, leaving them ill-equipped to bear the increased costs. We know all too well that poverty, alcohol consumption, smoking, and family structure all have a much stronger influence on fire outcomes than fire department response time,5,6,7 yet we persist in making arguments that more firefighters will mean faster responses and better fire outcomes. If only this were true.
The most enlightened fire safety advocates among fire service professionals have successfully advocated improvements in building and fire codes as well as product standards that have saved countless lives and earned the respect and support of corporate interests. Partnerships to improve fire safety through voluntary action and community outreach have come from these efforts and recognition of the high public esteem in which firefighters are held.
The time has more than come for firefighters to return this respect, by recognizing that increased funding for fire services can only come at the expense of other, often more pressing community concerns. For our part, we must start supporting efforts to make our services more efficient without sacrificing our effectiveness or exposing firefighters themselves to unreasonable risks of injury or death.
This requires us to accept the same degree of personal responsibility we expect of the public and elected officials. Taking responsibility will require abandoning protectionist work practices that promote isolationism and elitism, discarding obsolete accounting and budget practices that obscure the true costs of our service, and taking personal responsibility for choices that affect our safety.
Wherever they exist, we must put an end to workplace practices that excuse firefighters from responsibility for managing fire risk in their communities, especially avoidance of those activities that involve promoting fire prevention. We don’t need statistics to tell us that some people are more apt to suffer fires than others. These people need our help every bit as much, if not more, before a fire starts as afterward. If we are truly committed to their safety, then we’ll find the time and the way to reach them.
Too many fire departments still operate as fiefdoms rather than cooperating actively with their neighbors and seeking ways to improve their capabilities jointly. For every gap in service delivery represented by a difficult staffing or deployment situation, many fire departments could easily identify an overlap or duplication of service overhead that remains unrecognized and unremedied.
Adoption of accrual accounting methods that force decision makers to confront the long-term costs and consequences of competing capital investments would demonstrate the importance of exploring opportunities to do our business differently without removing public good from the equation altogether8 (UN 1995:9-11). These techniques do not require us to consider difficult questions such as the value of private investments in fire safety and protection arising from compliance with building and fire codes or voluntary efforts to exceed these prescriptions, although doing so seems a logical next step.
With far more firefighters dying from conditions resulting from poor fitness, unhealthy lifestyles, and bad decisions than conditions arising out of fire combat,9, 10 we must take a critical look at ourselves and change our own behavior where required. This includes holding one another accountable for decisions and actions that place others or ourselves in jeopardy rather than implying that blame for all firefighter deaths and injuries lies at the feet of someone else.
We must never trade the life of a firefighter for that of anyone else, including another firefighter, much less a building, a landscape or habitat, or-for that matter-some obscure principle. This is not a question of staffing so much as one of common sense. Putting our own safety first by avoiding situations that pose an unreasonable risk of injury or death, regardless of the circumstances, in no way reflects a dereliction of duty, nor does it diminish our respect for the lives of others. It does recognize our own mortality and the equal worth of every firefighter’s life to that of others.
Few of these changes cost very much, if anything, to implement. In fact, most of these changes could help our fire departments realize net savings while reducing response times.
Nothing says we have to wait for an emergency 911 call to respond to fire risk in our communities. If we leverage the successful private investments that have already yielded dramatic declines in fire incidence, death, and injury rates across America by investing more public effort into fire prevention and safety, we can ensure that fire department travel times matter less and less to the real outcomes for our communities. ■
Endnotes
1. Dedman, B. (2005). “Deadly Delays: The Decline in Fire Response,” Boston Globe Special Report, January 30-31, 2005. Available online at http://www.boston.com/news/specials/fires/; last accessed 5 Feb. 2005.
2. Profile of Fire in the United States 1989-1998, 12th edition, FA-214, Emmitsburg, Md.: United States Fire Administration, Department of Homeland Security, 2004. Available online at http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/ pdf/publications/fa-214.pdf; last accessed 5 Feb. 2005.
3. Wilmot, R. T. D. and T. Paish, World Fire Statistics Center 19, October 2003. Geneva: International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics, 2003. Available online at http://www.genevaassociation.org/FIRE%20N%B019%20-%20October%202003.pdf; last accessed 5 Feb. 2005.
4. Ahrens, M. U.S. Experience with Smoke Alarms, Other Fire Alarms. Quincy, Mass.: National Fire Protection Association, 1998.
5. “Establishing a Relationship Between Alcohol and Casualties of Fire,” FA-200. Emmitsburg, Md.: United States Fire Administration, Department of Homeland Security, 1999. Available online at http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/txt/publications/fa-200.txt; last accessed 5 Feb. 2005.
6. “An NFIRS Analysis: Investigating City Characteristics and Residential Fire Rates,” FA-179, Emmitsburg, Md.: United States Fire Administration, Department of Homeland Security, 1998. Available online at http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/City.pdf; last accessed on 5 Feb. 2005.
7. “Socioeconomic Factors and the Incidence of Fire,” FA-170. Emmitsburg, Md.: United States Fire Administration, Department of Homeland Security, 1997. Available online at http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/txt/publications/fa-170.txt; last accessed 5 Feb. 2005.
8. “Financial Management for Improved Public Management and Development,” 12th Meeting of Experts on the United Nations Programme in Public Administration and Finance, New York, 31 July to 11 August 1995. New York: United Nations, 1995. Available online at http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan000760.pdf; last accessed 5 Feb. 2005.
9. “Firefighter Fatality Retrospective Study, 1990-2000,” FA-220. Emmitsburg, Md.: United States Fire Administration, Department of Homeland Security, 2002. Available online at http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/fa-220.pdf; last accessed 5 Feb. 2005.
10. Fahy, R. F., “Firefighter Fatalities Resulting from Heart Attacks,” NFPA Journal, Mar./Apr. 1993, 73.
■ MARK CHUBB is assistant fire region commander for Transalpine Fire Region of the New Zealand Fire Service. He formerly served as the executive director of the Southeastern Association of Fire Chiefs and fire code coordinator for Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc. in Birmingham, Alabama. He has a bachelor of science degree in fire science and urban studies from the University of Maryland and a graduate certificate in applied management from the Australian Institute of Police Management. He is currently studying for the degree master of public policy at Victoria University of Wellington. Chubb is a member of the Institution of Fire Engineers and a certified building official. He is a Fire Engineering editorial advisory board member.
