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More Efficient Inspections, Pre-Fire Plans
Consider this situation: You’re a member of a small city fire department and have been assigned to do building inspections between fire calls. Scheduled for inspection is the Pay & Pray Cafe. According to its inspection file, the cafe had a previous violation for an uncharged fire extinguisher. However, from the poorly lighted exit sign to the grease-encrusted filters over the cooking area, it’s apparent that several other violations either cropped up since the last inspection or got misfiled or lost amidst the paperwork.
Just as you begin examining and noting the various fire hazards, an alarm comes in. You rejoin your unit and respond to the fire. By the time the incident is under control and overhauling operations completed, your shift is finished.
Three weeks later, you receive a report of a working fire at the Pay & Pray Cafe.
Several victims, who had tried to exit through the rear of the cafe and found their secondary means of egress blocked, became disoriented. Firefighters were able to lead them to safety and extinguish the blaze.
An investigation turns up several rather interesting discoveries, among them the need for a better and more uniform method of conducting inspections and keeping records.
It was determined that the fire had been caused by exposed and frayed electrical wires over the dimly lighted exit sign, and that propane was being stored in the basement—a detail most firefighters would want to be informed of.
A thorough check of the inspection files showed that the exposed wires were never noticed, but the obstructed rear exit door and the propane storage were. The first violation was scribbled on a small scrap of paper that got wedged inside the file, and the propane storage was marked in red—on the front of the folder. The cafe should have had a follow-up inspection long before the last interrupted check, but there was never any reinspection because the memos to the company fire officer assigned to fire prevention were never formally recorded.
Pre-fire inspections not only serve to correct potential fire hazards, they are also valuable for gathering pre-fire planning information (construction features, location of utility shutoffs, any special hazards, life hazard, exposure considerations, etc.), as well as for adjusting insurance premium rates.
The recent shift in emphasis from fire suppression to fire prevention is the result of changes in rating systems that are used to judge fire department quality and efficiency. In the past, these ratings were primarily concerned with a fire department’s ability to extinguish fires; now, they give equal emphasis to a fire department’s ability to prevent fires. And these ratings translate directly into insurance premium costs/savings.
In Washington State, for example, a two-point improvement in fire department performance can reduce home and business fire insurance premiums 20%. While a two-point improvement in fire suppression is usually very difficult and expensive to achieve, a stepped-up fire inspection program makes it possible to accomplish the same improvement at far less cost.
Frequent building inspections and strict enforcement of fire codes lie at the heart of effective fire prevention programs. However, unless the information learned from these inspections is organized, analyzed, and easily available to all firefighters who may be affected by it, very little benefit is reaped.
Most fire departments cannot afford a special team of fire inspectors, which means that inspections have to be performed by special assigned firefighters or on-duty firefighters between calls.
Inspections and reinspections generate a tremendous amount of paperwork, and most departments simply don’t have sufficient clerical staff to handle the scheduling of inspections and followups on code violations. Of course, inputting all the data into a computer would help greatly in organizing inspection records and schedules. However, few fire departments have the resources to purchase large mainframe computers and specialized software programs.
Yet, setting up a good, workable inspection system need not require $10,000+ . Off-the-shelf hardware and software designed for and/or adapted to the needs of the fire service is already available and capable of reducing fire insurance costs and easing the dissemination of pre-fire planning information.
In fact, the Camas and Vancouver, WA, Fire Departments each have an under $5,000 computerized fire inspection program online that organizes information about the buildings in each town, schedules yearly fire inspections, prints out notices of violations, and reschedules inspections until violations are corrected. Neighborhoods and building owners who are responsible for an unusual number of violations can be easily identified.
This particular inspection and pre-fire program has three data entry forms and 10 menus that guide the operator through entering data, editing data, and generating reports. Because it’s entirely menu driven, the program requires minimum operator training. For example, a built-in report generator organizes the information entered during the pre-fire and violation inspections, and prints summary sheets showing all the relevant information about each building (see chart).
Many computer program systems allow for error-correction capability. For example, if an address is improperly entered, the computer will not accept the data until it is corrected, which ensures consistency of data and file integrity. This is necessary to prepare accurate reports that are organized by street and building numbers.
It’s also important when choosing a program to select one that can readily adapt to changing requirements. As new needs emerge, they should be able to be built onto your existing data base. For example, if a fire incidence reporting system is developed, it should be easily added to the basic program without extensive reprogramming or re-keying data.
Chief Maynard Erickson of the Camas Fire Department says that their computerized fire inspection program can expand as their town expands, enabling the department to protect a larger area without increased inspection expenses. “We can now schedule fire inspections and follow up on code violations in an organized, systematic manner. We can print out lists of buildings requiring reinspection organized by street, date of reinspection, or severity of fire hazard. In the past, this information used to be hidden in file folders. There was little or no uniformity; each inspector tended to keep track of violations in a different way.”
Now a Computerized Inspection Program Works
A fire department’s first step in setting up a computerized fire inspection program is to build a data base, entering the names and addresses of all homes and businesses in the area. A file number is automatically assigned for each building. Phone books, street directories, tax records, and building permits are the starting point for creating an inventory of a city’s buildings.
Next, firefighters perform a physical inspection of each building, noting construction, contents, known hazards, location of hydrants and exposures, the number of people who are likely to be in the building at night and during the day, the type and location of utility shutoffs, the best means of entering the building, etc. All this information, as well as any code violations, is catalogued into the computer program.
Violation notices are printed and sent to building owners. The program then prints lists of buildings containing violations sorted by reinspection date. This organizes follow-up inspections. Lists of violations can also be organized by street, building owner, or type of violation.
Pre-fire reports containing full information about each building can also be printed out. These can be three-hole punched, inserted in binders, and carried in each fire truck, permitting quick reference while responding to the fire. Or, if left in the station house or at the dispatch office, the information can be radioed to responding units.
The inspection and pre-fire program discussed in this article was created by David R. Campbell, a district fire commissioner in Clark County, WA, and a volunteer firefighter since 1973. The program, based on Microhm’s R: Base 5000, is available from Cascade Vista Computer Systems, P.O. Box 836, Battle Ground, WA 98604; or phone (206) 6872828. Mr. Campbell is the president of Cascade Vista.
Fire Marshal Rick Atkins of the Vancouver Fire Department noted that their computerized inspection program is based around an IBM XT in fire department headquarters, connected by a modem to IBM PCs in each of the three fire stations. Inspection information is exchanged between the computers, with each shift in each station having its own floppy disk containing information about the buildings it’s responsible for. This information is routinely uploaded to the XT at headquarters.
“Before putting this program into operation, we would assign firefighters geographic areas of responsibility. Now, we can print out specific occupancies (i.e., buildings) that each shift is responsible for inspecting. This additional accountability results in better coverage of an area.”
