Fire prevention strategies and best practices

Fire Prevention

Among the many challenges that law enforcement and firefighters face every day in America fires are near the top in terms of danger to the public and to property. In this paper a review of the problems that fires cause -- and the incidences of fires in America -- plus some historical perspective is provided.

America Burning

In 1972, President Richard Nixon established a commission to research and report back to the nation as to the problem of fires in the United States. The report he received from The National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control called "America Burning" explained that each hour about "…300 destructive fires will rage somewhere in this Nation." The financial loss in those 300 fires will be about $300,000 and "…at least one person will have died" while 34 people will be injured, some of them seriously.

The report emphasized that destructive fires in the U.S. (in the 1970s) cost "at least $11.4 billion" and beyond that the losses due to jobs destroyed by fire are not calculable. Citizen deaths caused by these destructive fires are estimated to be upwards of 12,000, the Commission explained. The Commission calls it "appalling" that the richest and most technologically advanced nation in the world "…leads all the major industrialized countries" when it comes to deaths and loss of property from fires. The Commission states that in Canada (in that same time frame) there were reports of 29.7 deaths per million population; in America there were reports of 57.1 deaths per million population.

As to the deaths of firefighters, the Commission explained that the firefighter death rate is 15% greater than the "next most dangerous occupations," which are mining and quarrying. In fact in 1971, for every 100 firefighters working on a building in flames 39.6 of them are injured. Add to those grim statistics the fact that in 1971, 175 firefighters died while doing their jobs and another 89 firefighters died of heart attacks while putting out blazes.

The Commission explained that there are "unnecessary hazards" in the materials and the design of typical places of work and of homes in America -- and some of the fires can be blamed on those vulnerabilities in building materials. Also, the Commission asserted that there are "important areas of research" which are being "neglected"; the Commission offers a number of potential solutions to those problems, including the need to "educate Americans in fire safety."

Meanwhile, in August, 2007, the U.S. Fire Administration (a subdivision of FEMA) put out a report that shows great strides have been taken to make the public and firefighters safer. For example, the report states that in 1974 a goal was established to cut civilian deaths from fires in half. This goal "was met," the report explains, and as of 2002 there were an average of 3,380 civilian deaths per year. The death rate of 13.6 people per million population is "half what it was in the late 1970s," and despite those improving statistics, the U.S. has a fire death rate that is "two and a half times that of several European nations," according to the FEMA report.