Is Too Much Fire Prevention Bad?

[EFD840]

will less fires equal less cabable FF's? I would say a resounding yes and I believe it will lead to an increase of FF deaths over the years

It doesn't have to be that way! It is overly simplistic to say that we can't be as good as previous generations because we don't get to experience fires as often. Training can to a great extent supplant the loss of experience opportunities. The US military is a shining example. They take kids with mostly no experience with weapons or warfare and in a few month's time create the best soldiers on the planet. Training, equipment, and dedication are the determining factors that give them the ability to adapt to different challenges like fighting guys in Toyotas when they expected guys in T-72s.

[DeputyChiefGonzo]

Originally posted by engine23ccvfd
Assuming Smitty's real question was... will less fires equal less cabable FF's? I would say a resounding yes and I believe it will lead to an increase of FF deaths over the years. However I am of the unpopular opinion that five additional line of duty deaths a year would be worth the thousand or so saved lives by having an informed public.....flame away!

Two questions....
what freakin' planet are you on?
Are you willing to be one of the 5 additional LODD's?

Maybe you have never been to a LODD funeral or memorial service. I have been to way too many in my career, and unfortunately I will probably be to a few more by the time I retire.


Fire prevention is as important as suppression and training. If we can educate John and Jane Q. to be a little more careful, and we can do a better job of training, it reduces the risk of being a potential LODD. It doesn't take an Einstein to go figure that out!

[MIKEYLIKESIT]

I would like to clear up a pretty common misconception... "We dont get any fires anymore"..It may be true in some parts of the U.S.A. but around here, the number of fires is INCREASING... This despite our efforts to educate the public to the dangers of fire from the time they are "wee ones" through the "golden years". You CANNOT have too much prevention and public education. However, you can't be in everyones homes "holding their hands" and preventing them from doing stupid and sometimes criminal things. You also can't paint our Country with a broad brush. Each area of the U.S. has unique issues when it comes to fires and preventing them. Smoke detectors and better pub ed have lead to a HUGE decrease in the number of fire deaths in our nation. We still lose way too many people to fire. Lets discuss the nature of the urban area leaving its traditional inner city setting and moving to the suburbs. This is happening around Chicago and from the looks of it around other parts of the U.S. too. So yes, most inner city companies aren't running several working fires each and every day. But the fire problem has moved around a bit, the economy is not the greatest and demographics are constantly changing. To say that too much fire pervention is somehow wrong, is short-sighted and does the public and ourselves a great disservice.

[cm5626]

DUFFMAN You Da Man!!!

smitty91
Since you have all that extra time not going to fires, pick up a book or a video, better yet go out back and pick up the saw a practice cut on a few palettes or somthing. I'll tell you why training is better that the real thing... If you don't do somthing right, 99% of the time you can get away with it on the scene. In a training senario you can learn to do it right. Doing it right is what saves lives...not lowering your Prevention standards to get more fires.

I'm can't believe you actually wrote that! Next thing you'll tell us is that Firefighter Arsonists are good because they give us practice!

[Duffman]

Put the Bong down and slowly back away

Assuming Smitty's real question was... will less fires equal less cabable FF's? I would say a resounding yes and I believe it will lead to an increase of FF deaths over the years. However I am of the unpopular opinion that five additional line of duty deaths a year would be worth the thousand or so saved lives by having an informed public.....flame away!

If you think "five additional line of duty deaths a year" would make any difference in how informed the public is think again. As far as fewer fires menaing less capable FF's, I will say this. The fewer fires you have the more time you have to train, and train you should.

According to your logic the problem will solve itself. More firefighters will die because we have fewer fires, and because a few more die thousands of lives will be saved. Where do you come up with this garbage?

[engine23ccvfd]

Gonzo dont assume to know how many LODDS I have been to or how close I was to those lost both in my career as a LEO and as a volunteer in the fire service.

Training sure its great and gives us the basics but nothing can simulate the stress, heat, urgency, and more intense fire/gasses modern furnishings create. We blast each other for training deaths and then wonder why our skills are eroding. Can each of you honestly say you would not enter that iffy structure fire in order to save that confirmed entrapment?

Many districts in large cities have scene a reduction in fires but arrive to more intense situations than ten years ago due in large part to PR and public education. We have made great strides with command structures safety officers and all the new equipment which gives us a greater sense of control. However I firmly believe the lower amount of civilian deaths each year and the yearly avg of LODDS remaining the same every year (9-11 excluded) is a direct result of the point I tried to make earlier. We are already losing brothers and sisters to fires while saving more lives. This trend will increase IMO.

[Dushore5741]

Until the whistles stop blowing, the pagers stop beeping and the alarms stop ringing.... There isn't enough fire prevention going around to stop teaching our communities. Fires can be prevented. Most Fires. If you really think about how every fire you have starts. I bet at least 90% of them can be prevented.

[leadlo]

OUCH!! That had to hurt! With all the fires across the country everyday, the LODD rate at 100 per year is low, but still in no way acceptable. I can't imagine what the number would be without good fire prevention programs and adequate training. Training live or not teaches you how to use the tools of the trade. If you can become comfortable with the use of these tools (frequency) you should not have any problem applying what you already know. Emotions and adrenaline are things you need to be able to control. If you are not mentally prepared for the task at hand you become an added liability to an already unstable situation.

[Firebraun]

Do we have less fires now than say, 20 years ago?

On an annual average, I'd say yes. But my department just had a "run" of 16 working 1 or 2 alarm fires in a 14 day period of time...

Yes, Prevention is important... And necessary and valued and all that. However, so is Training, and Code Enforcement, and Fleet Maintenance and Hydrant Maintenance and the list goes on and on...

No, Gonzo, I would NOT be willing to be one of those 5 LODD's in exchange for 1,000 lives saved by having an informed public. That is really an idiotic comparison. Prevention should be saving those 1,000 lives totally independently from our operations.

We are only called upon when someone who isn't in that group of 1,000 that Prevention has "reached" does something stupid (that Prevention would have obviously taught them not to do) and creates a fire, right?

Apples to Oranges... Prevention does their job, we do ours....

[GeorgeWendtCFI]

Prevention should be saving those 1,000 lives totally independently from our operations.

EXACTLY!

[Diane E]

Good Grief.

On behalf of the 270+ members of the Suffolk County Fire Safety Educator's Assn., there is NEVER enough fire prevention! One victim is one too many.

Diane
President
SCFSEA

[RyanEMVFD]

Does This Have Anything To Do With This Thread?

Fire prevention has gone to the goats in Arizona

Copyright 2003 Charleston Newspapers
Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia)
July 23, 2003, Wednesday

PRESCOTT, Ariz. - The newest recruits in the federal government's wildfire prevention program toil all day in the blazing sun and rarely need a break.



They also make dandy sweaters.
Angora and Nubian goats - 600 of them - have been trucked 175 miles from the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona to Prescott National Forest. Their assignment is to chomp on the scrub brush that stokes small fires into roaring infernos.

"They're lean, mean, eating machines," says Mike Creach of the U.S. Forest Service, who is overseeing the six-month experiment. "And they're pretty good fertilizers, too."

With federal and state forest managers seeking ways to prevent and control wildfires, off-beat projects such as Creach's are getting more than a chuckle and brushoff.

Last spring and summer, wildfires burned 7.2 million acres, mainly in the West, killed 23 firefighters and cost $ 1.6 billion to put out. One of those wildfires forced the evacuation of Prescott residents, destroying six expensive homes perched on a ridge top above town, while consuming 1,300 acres.

As people build farther away from cities, the "urban interface" with wilderness grows and, with it, the demand to protect development.

The goat experiment began as Creach looked for an inexpensive way to maintain a firebreak established three years ago between the national forest and a neighborhood in Prescott, a community of 40,000.

At a cost of $ 50 to $ 250 an acre, burning undergrowth is a relatively inexpensive option, but the risk of losing control of the fire or creating high levels of air pollution can make it undesirable.

A "brush crush" operation that uses huge machines to chew up coarse vegetation costs $ 500 an acre and can damage the terrain.

Animals, however, eat for a living. And goats eat plants that pickier livestock won't touch.

[E40FDNYL35]

102 UNITED STATES FIREFIGHTER FATALITIES IN 2002 REPORT

[Bones42]

Almost 12% of the 2002 LODD's were training related.

[E40FDNYL35]

EMMITSBURG, MD - The United States Fire Administration (USFA) announced today that 102 firefighters died while on-duty in the United States, in 2002. The loss of a firefighter's life was felt directly in more than 86 communities, in 35 states across the nation.

"The United States fire service and this nation have suffered another
staggering loss of firefighters, in 2002. When the citizens of this
nation need emergency services, they have come to rely on this nation's firefighters to be able to respond. The United States Fire Administration is committed to helping improve firefighter safety to prevent these tragedies from occurring in the future," United States Fire Administrator R. David Paulson said.

The severe wildfire season of 2002 led to a number of wildland firefighter deaths. In 2002, 20 firefighters died in wildland fire fighting incidents. Most of the firefighter fatalities related to wildland fires occurred in California and Colorado, where the fire season was especially severe. During the months of June, July, and August, 17 firefighters died in 8 wildland fire incidents. Six of these deaths were the result of 3 wildland fire fighting aircraft crashes. Five firefighters were killed as they traveled from Oregon to Colorado to fight a wildland fire when their van was involved in a crash and 3 California firefighters were killed when their fire truck left the roadway and rolled down an 800-foot hill.

Twenty-five firefighters died in 9 incidents where more than one
firefighter was killed. Four wildland incidents (2 aircraft crashes and 2 vehicle crashes) described above took the lives of a total of 13 firefighters.

Two Central New York firefighters were killed when they became trapped in the basement of a burning house; 2 St. Louis firefighters died when they were trapped in the interior of a burning business; 3 New Jersey firefighters were killed when a burning residential structure collapsed as
they searched the building for victims; and 3 Oregon firefighters were killed when they became trapped in the interior of a burning business after a structural collapse. Two Florida firefighters were killed during a training exercise in July. There were 77 single firefighter fatality incidents.

Career firefighters, those who are employed full-time as firefighters, comprised 37 deaths (36%) in 2002. Volunteer, seasonal, and part-time firefighters accounted for 65 deaths. Ten of the 65 were seasonal or part-time wildland firefighters.

The vast majority of firefighter fatalities in 2002 occurred in relation to a fire or medical emergency incident. Seventy percent of the firefighters who died while on-duty in 2002 suffered fatal injuries or illnesses in emergency situations.

Fifteen firefighters died as they responded to an emergency or returned from one, many of these deaths involve vehicle collisions. Twelve deaths occurred during training.

Six firefighters died in separate incidents when they were struck by
passing vehicles while working near roadways. Three of these firefighters were killed as they assisted on the scene of motor vehicle crashes, 1 on the scene of a vehicle fire, 1 on the scene of a wildland fire, and 1 during training.

Fifteen firefighters engaged in other fire department duties at the time of their death occurred in 2002. The 5 Oregon firefighters killed in a van crash in Colorado as they traveled there to assist in fire fighting efforts are included in this category.

Half of the firefighters that died on-duty in 2002 died of traumatic
injuries. Eleven firefighters died of asphyxiation; 2 died of burns; 3 firefighters were crushed; 1 firefighter died of heat exhaustion; 1
firefighter drowned; and 36 died of traumatic injuries such those incurred in a vehicle crash. A fire chief in New Mexico was killed when he was shot while on the scene of a structure fire.

Heart attacks continue to be a leading cause of firefighter deaths, killing 31 firefighters in 2002. The 31 deaths represent almost one third of the 2002 total.

The largest loss of firefighter lives in a single incident occurred in Colorado. A group of firefighters were traveling from Oregon in a van that was involved in a single vehicle collision. The highest number of deaths occurred in July with 15 firefighter fatalities, October brought the fewest deaths with 3.

These fatality statistics for 2002 are provisional and subject to change as the USFA contacts State Fire Marshals at the beginning of each year to verify the names of firefighters reported to have died on-duty during the previous year and expects to have the annual fatality report completed by
early June.