Fire Prevention Week 2007: What you can do

By Jamie Thompson
FireRescue1 News Editor

Throughout the nation next week, departments will be reaching out to their communities to spread the fire prevention message in a variety of ways, including open houses and school visits.

Officially running from Oct. 7-13, Fire Prevention Week represents the fire service’s best opportunity of the year to drive home the safety message to communities.

While there is certainly positive impact from these efforts, the true challenge is keeping the momentum going for the rest of the year. The problem is that, in the eyes of many in the fire service, fire prevention just isn’t glamorous enough to make it a top priority.

But the theme of this year’s prevention week – Practice Your Escape Plan – has ramifications not only for households, but for firefighters, too. Drilling home the importance of home escape plans can go a long way toward reducing the number of firefighter fatalities, according to Chief Billy Hayes, of Riverdale, Ga., Fire Services.

“If people have an escape plan and they know where the meeting place is, they can meet the firefighters when they arrive and say, ‘We are all out of the house,’” Hayes said.

“That information changes everything for the first companies arriving. It means they know there’s no life safety risk and can certainly fight the fire, but not lose a firefighter just for the sake of the building.”

Many Americans unprepared
According to a survey in 2004 by the NFPA, which organizes Fire Prevention Week, only one in four Americans has devised and practiced a plan to escape from their home during a fire. Three-quarters of those polled believed they had 10 minutes or less until a fire turns deadly, while the actual time available is often much less.

Judy Comoletti, assistant vice president of public education at the NFPA, said such statistics highlight the need for fire departments to take part in Fire Prevention Week and beyond.

“Getting fire safety information out is just as important as fire suppression or inspections,” she said. “Residents having the information they need to keep themselves safe from fire is going to obviously benefit the fire department.”

The NFPA has a range of resources and tips to help firefighters promote the week, including sample escape plans and even a computer game aimed at educating people on how to best escape a fire.

They include:

Radio public service announcements
These specially-designed PSAs in both English and Spanish can help your department reach out into the community about Fire Prevention Week in a new way. They range from 30 to 60 seconds in length, and can be easily e-mailed to your local radio station.

Emergency evacuation planning guides for people with disabilities
The guide was developed with input from disabled people and provides information on the five general categories of disabilities — mobility, visual, hearing, speech and cognitive. It focuses on the four elements of evacuation information that occupants need — notification, finding the way, use of the way and assistance.

Home escape plans
Forms that can be given to residents to help design escape routes in case of emergency.

Media materials
A range of templates are available for press releases, proclamations and opinion pieces that can help to get your message across in local media.

Comoletti said the resources are designed to help departments with limited budgets and resources get involved in the initiative.

Maintaining momentum
For Hayes, it’s vital that fire departments try to keep the impetus going after the week comes to a close, something he admits can be difficult.

Photo Glynn County Fire Dept. The late Capt. Garland Evors from Glynn County (Ga.) Fire Department dresses as a clown during a Fire Prevention Week in 2001.

“Prevention is not popular in the fire service,” he said. “Firefighters don’t join the service to be a prevention officer. They want to be fighting fires every day.”

When it comes to fire prevention, said Hayes, the United States still lags behind many European and Asian countries, where community safety and prevention is stressed as much as the firefighting aspect.

Japan in particularly is known for its tough stance on fires caused by carelessness.

If an American resident accidentally sets his home on fire through the careless disposal of a cigarette or failing to keep an eye on the stove while cooking, the Red Cross will be swiftly on the scene to deliver aid and support post-fire. The insurance company will normally deal with the rest.

“If you did that in Japan, you’d be run out of the community,” Hayes said. “You’d be seen as an outcast, a threat to safety. But here we just don’t hold people accountable for their actions.”

Hayes, who has experience as an assistant fire marshal and a public state educator, has overseen a range of public safety initiatives since becoming chief in his department seven years ago, including:

• Turning a school bus, donated by the local school board, into a mobile fire safety bus that tours community and school groups to deliver safety messages
  
• Using grant funding to purchase a sprinkler demonstration trailer that shows the how sprinklers work and how effective they can be
  
• Creation of a citizen fire academy along similar lines to the more common citizen police academies that can be found in some areas. The academies aim to create a nucleus of citizens who gain insight into the practices and services of the police/fire services. Academy “graduates” are then encouraged to share their knowledge and experiences with the community. Graduates from the fire academy in Riverdale, Ga. are also encouraged to set up a neighborhood fire marshal program, organizing events such as community fire drills
  
• Creating clown/puppet programs to promote fire safety in a fun and visual way in schools

Hayes said that these examples highlight the number of ways the community can be engaged prior to the 911 call.

And while not every firefighter has the right personality to teach fire safety to schoolchildren, virtually every firefighter can do something about promoting safety somewhere along the line.

“There are just some people that can’t do the school stuff,” Hayes said, “and you don’t want to make them, and have the message delivered inappropriately.

“But if you’re doing a building inspection and see an exit blocked, then tell the manager that it’s a violation and go further, and explain in detail why it shouldn’t be blocked in and what could happen.”

Starting at the top
The general lack of fire prevention direction and efforts, Hayes said, can begin at the very top.

“If you look at the publications and guides that a fire chief has on his desk … in every one of those, fire prevention will be right at the back and often the smallest chapter,” he said. “But for me, prevention is the best way of fighting the fire and the best way to reduce unnecessary line-of-duty deaths.”

There are signs, however, that things are improving in some pockets of the country.

In the Washington, D.C., Metro area, public educators have come together to form a regional organization that serves as both a support group and a way to implement a unified approach to community fire safety.

Group president Bill Delaney, a career firefighter of 17 years and a volunteer before that, said that public education is almost the “black sheep” of the fire service.

“There can still be the feeling that ‘You’re trying to do us out of a job, we won’t have fires to go to,’” he said.

“It is slowly getting better, but the reality is there’s still not really a lot of emphasis or resources dedicated toward it.”

Delaney’s group has already made great strides since it was formed in the spring.

In an initiative developed by the organization, several departments have made the online National Fire Academy course — Self-Study Course for Community Safety Educators (Q118) — mandatory for probationary members (Montgomery & Fairfax Counties). Two departments have gone even further by mandating that all personnel take the course.

“You go to most recruit schools and ask how much of the curriculum is dedicated to fire prevention and injury prevention, and most training officers will probably say only an hour or two,” Delaney said.

“Our group shows that if everyone focuses their efforts together, you can try to change the culture of the fire service.”

One of the main benefits of setting up such a group is that it allows departments to pool together their limited resources, according to Delaney.

“There’s so many common messages that we are all saying,” he said. “By coming together, you can look at getting grants for the region and it makes all of our jobs easier.”

Of course, funding is still one of the biggest issues when it comes to fire prevention initiatives.

“You look back to 9/11, when well over 3,000 people were lost,” Hayes said. “We’ve spent billions of dollars on homeland security since then, and it’s wonderful that we haven’t had any domestic terrorism on our soil since.

“However we have lost over 18,000 people in this country as a result of fire since then, but there’s no public outcry about that or any significant funding to help.”

• Joe M. Combs, Volunteer Chief Glynn County Fire Department Volunteer Division, says, “The clown pictured in this article is the late Captain Garland Evors (who died from a brain tumor). He was the founder of our fire prevention program as we know it today. He was extremely active with children and has been missed. In this shot, he was ‘calling the President of the United States’ while doing one of the things he loved the most ... entertaining a child.”