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Posted May 23, 2001
Burning IssueBy Jonathan Walters
Anyone who has ever seen, been the victim of, or fought a fire knows that manpower, equipment and a reasonably rapid response are the three most critical ingredients in keeping harm to people and property to a minimum.
But anyone familiar with fire fighting also knows that one community’s needs when it comes to fire suppression may be vastly different from another’s. And so dictating broad standards for staffing and response times from on high to be applied nationally doesn’t make much sense.
Yet that’s what the National Fire Protection Association decided to do, at least on a preliminary basis, at its recent World Fire Safety Congress. The NFPA — the national advisory body that oversees suggested codes and standards for fire fighting procedures, gear and equipment — for the first time recommended minimum manpower and response times to be applied uniformly to all fire companies. While the NFPA recommendations are “voluntary,” they in fact pack real punch in the fire-suppression world.
The proposed Standard 1710 calls for paid companies to be staffed with at least four fire fighters at all times, for fire companies to turn out within 60 seconds of an alarm, for fire fighting apparatus to be on the scene within four minutes, and for fire fighters to be fully engaged in fighting the fire within eight minutes. As part of the push, the NFPA is also suggesting standards for volunteer fire companies, which says they must be able to engage a fire within two minutes of all equipment arriving on the scene.
This is a one-size-fits-all approach to a world that absolutely defies a single standard when it comes to staffing and response time. Manpower and response time standards need to be evaluated on a fire district-by-fire district basis using a wide variety of data, from an analysis of frequency of various types of emergency calls (the vast majority of emergency calls these days are for medical services, not fire fighting), to the types of structures in the district, to traffic patterns in a district (the faster a fire truck is going, the greater the chance it’s going to be involved in an accident on the way to a fire call), to the availability of mutual aid, to, quite bluntly, a community’s general willingness to support fire suppression. In many cases, the NFPA standards might simply be a mandate for increased local government spending while doing very little to increase local public safety.
It’s one thing for the NFPA to set standards for fire fighting apparatus, gear and certain basic operating procedures (its “two firefighters in/two out” rule for interior fire fighting is a good standard). But it’s quite another for the organization to begin weighing in in an area that has huge fiscal implications for local government, and that ought to be left up to local officials, communities and fire companies to work out themselves.
Many fire fighters don’t like to acknowledge it — they’re trained and geared up to fight fires — but it’s new world, and that world is a place that’s experiencing far fewer fires, and where money for fire suppression might be better spent somewhere else. Most fundamentally, it’s a world where decisions about how all emergency services will be operated and funded ought not to be made by some national association (many of whose members have a clear financial interest in mandatory staffing and response standards), but by local officials who have to live with the political and fiscal consequences of all the decisions they make around emergency services.
Between July 10-13, a committee of the NFPA will take a final vote on whether to adopt the standards. How the vote turns out could have steep implications for issues of local control and fiscal decision-making.
Jonathan Walters is a staff correspondent for Governing and is active in the local fire company in Ghent, New York.
Agree? Disagree? Want to expand on the discussion? E-mail us at mailbox@governing.com, and we'll post your comments here. Please include your name, location, government or business title or job description, and a daytime phone number (for verification purposes).
Readers’ Responses:
DIVERTING DOLLARS
Jonathan Walters begins his "Burning Issue" article with the statement that the "three most critical ingredients in keeping harm to people and property to a minimum" from fire are manpower, equipment and a reasonably rapid response. This statement couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, it is fire prevention and built-in fire detection and automatic sprinklers that have been the prime reasons why after decades of increases in fire deaths, injuries and property losses, the United States fire services have finally has had success in reducing these statistics.
Since 1978, fire incidents are down 38 percent, civilian deaths are down 48 percent, fire fighter deaths are down 47 percent, civilian injuries are down 23 percent, fire fighter injuries are down 13 percent and property damage adjusted for inflation is down 27 percent, and all of this during a time when cities and counties were spending less on fire suppression and response but increasing their code requirements for automatic sprinklers and smoke detectors. Further reductions from fire losses are still possible if communities continue to press for additional resources in these vital fire service areas.
The impact of 1710 will be extremely detrimental to local fire protection because it will divert dollars away from fire prevention, mitigation and education to fire suppression. The negative impact will also be felt on fire fighter death and injury rates. The third leading cause of fire fighter death and injury is vehicle accidents. The NFPA 1710 standard will not only force communities to pile more fire fighters onto a fire apparatus but also force them to repond faster, no doubt causing more vehicle accidents with the corresponding higher fire fighter deaths and injuries.
And unfortunately this will be all be in vain because most civilian deaths and injuries due to fire are from smoke inhalation, not burns. As just about every fire fighter knows, "They [civilians] are either standing on the front lawn or they are dead inside."
Gerry Hoetmer
MORE IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER
While I agree with much of what Jonathan Walters wrote, Gerry Hoetmer hit the nail on the head. Public safety, whether it be about crimes or fire loss, is a direct result of effective (or ineffective) prevention programs. Increasing staffing and decreasing response times to an absolute minimum will not only increase risk to firefighters, but also to the public. When a fire engine crashes trying to meet an artificial deadline, four firefighters will be off-duty on injury instead of two or three. While the firefighters may be injured, the motorists or pedestrians they hit may not fare that well.
And when the building collapses or they become disoriented inside, more lives will be lost because more firefighters were inside. A review of on-scene firefighter deaths and injuries a few years ago revealed that most happened when there were far more than four firefighters on scene. That's logical, since the more people present when something goes wrong, the more will be victims of that misfortune. As a result, the fire service of some other nations is reluctant to put firefighters inside any structure where the fire has grown beyond the incipient stage. That policy results in fewer injuries and a negligible increase in the cost of recovery for the property owner and insurer.
Fire suppression is a last resort when all other efforts have failed. But we have not devoted much more than lip service to our prevention efforts. And the fire suppression forces are not enamored of fire prevention. After all, how macho is someone with a fire/life safety checklist? When was the last time you saw a fire inspector hailed as a hero in your community? Yet they save far more lives in this country every day than all the firefighters in the world put together. If the NFPA is truly concerned about reducing fire loss, why doesn't 1710 dictate the minimum number of fire inspectors a city or county must employ? Or the ratio of inspectors to firefighters?
If the frequency of fires and the loss due to fire continue to decline, how can we justify increasing or even maintaining the size of our current standby army? Answer: By creating an artificial (based upon "professional opinion," not science) standard like NFPA 1710.
If the fire service were truly concerned about saving the lives and property of firefighters and civilians alike, they would agree to minimum standards for physical performance for all incumbent firefighters. Have you seen the appearance of some firefighters? Does it inspire confidence in you? I know of one case where a firefighter filed a grievance claiming an unsafe condition existed, because another firefighter was too grossly overweight to be capable of rescuing him if he needed help.
Ask the U.S. Fire Administration how many firefighters who died on duty were at the scene of a fire when they died. Most were at the station or responding to a call. And what about the many more who are disabled in the line of duty due to poor physical condition or preventable disease?
More is not always better, unless your only goal is to get more. If that is not the goal, then show me some scientific proof that a community that currently meets the staffing and response time requirements of 1710--and many do--is any safer than one that does not. Absent that proof, those officials elected by the taxpayers should be free of outside interference to determine the acceptable level of risk for their own community.
Fire suppression is but one of many services demanded by our residents. There is no new revenue source, and the state takes 86 percent of our property tax, so any increases in the cost of fire suppression must be taken from the budget of another city department. When we reduce the hours of the library or recreation department, the public will be immediately and directly affected (and we will hear loud complaints). When we add staff to a fire engine or give a command officer a driver, the public will not see any immediate or direct benefit.
The NFPA mission statement says they develop scientifically based consensus standards. So, show me the science used to develop 1710! And, if 20 percent of those voting at the NFPA convention opposed 1710, where is the consensus? The NFPA has done much great work. 1710, however, does not meet that standard.
John Penido
SET THE BAR
I think the NFPA proposed 1710 is right on the mark and applaud their efforts in pushing for national standards. Yes, conditions that affect response times will vary from district to district, but to suggest that a staffing and response time standard should not or cannot be uniformly adopted is missing the point. The point of setting standards is to establish a baseline of generally accepted practices that departments can adopt. How (and if) each department decides to adopt the standard is up to them, but it is important for the bar to be set.
Is Mr. Walters suggesting that a greater than 60 second turnout is acceptable, under any conditions? I don't think it is, and departments should be paying attention to these numbers and be diligent in their efforts to continuously improve. Yes, it may be difficult for some departments to meet these standards, but that by itself is not a suitable reason for not adopting them. If a department cannot get apparatus to the scene in four minutes, then maybe they should be looking at why, not questioning that it is the right thing to do.
This is not an unprecedented event. It was once thought that paramedic-level care would not be widely available in all areas. Now it is the generally accepted standard of care. and areas without it are considered very behind the times. The same can be said about emergency medical dispatch. It is this constant elevation of the bar that keeps departments progressive and improves public safety.
Standards in the fire service are nothing new. ISO has been rating fire departments for years, and those departments that consistently achieve higher ratings do in fact tend to be the leaders. Agreed, it is a new world in fire fighting--one in which there are certain expectations of care and public safety, regardless of location or tradition.
Scott B. Porter
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Logic v. the Law: sodomy, hate crimes and the search for consistency (posted May 12, 2001)
Achingly Alone: a mayor has to have a constituency (posted May 7, 2001)
Chipping Away at the GOP: riding the tide shift (posted May 1, 2001)
Our Day Care Obsession: like it or not, it’s here to stay (posted April 25, 2001)
The Census Microscope: perspective is everything (posted April 18, 2001)
Complete index of previous columns
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