Editor’s note: Jan. 19–25, 2026, marks the 7th annual CRR Week campaign. The 2026 CRR Week theme, Emergency Response, shines a spotlight on how fire departments’ response efforts are a vital part of Community Risk Reduction. This year’s toolkit emphasizes emergency response strategies that reduce risk, save lives and strengthen community safety. Learn more at the CRR Week resource center.
By Landon A. Churchill, BS, CFO, NRP, FSCEO, CFE, ECO
Before long, agencies that provide comprehensive risk reduction services to their communities will be as commonplace as supermarkets that provide a full selection of groceries under one roof. The question is: Will fire departments be those agencies? As citizens scrutinize government spending nationwide, fire departments are struggling to demonstrate value for money, and community risk reduction (CRR) is the answer.
Lessons from the supermarket revolution
In the early 20th century, it was common for shoppers to visit separate stores — such as the baker, the butcher, the pharmacist, the produce vendor and the dry goods shop — to purchase their groceries. This food supply model had been in favor for centuries.
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Then, in 1917, a revolutionary idea entered the market: the self-service, centralized supermarket. This model, which remains the gold standard, provided everything under one roof, enabling shoppers to make only one stop and enhancing the experience while reducing costs by allowing shoppers to choose their own items and bring them to a register to pay (Ross, 2016). This innovation originated from Clarence Saunders, the dry goods and general store entrepreneur who founded Piggly Wiggly.
In modern times, butchers, bakers, stand-alone pharmacies and produce stands are all considered obsolete. Perhaps you will find one in your community as a novelty or nostalgic tribute to a bygone era, but they have essentially evaporated as an effective business model in the United States.
The fire service at a crossroads: Breaking down CRR and the five Es
The fire service today stands where the butcher once did: a respected specialist in danger of being out-innovated. As fire departments, public health, private hospital corporations, nonprofit organizations and law enforcement compete for their slices of the proactive CRR pie, we find ourselves as an industry facing the same need for innovation that resulted in modern supermarkets.
In most communities, the proactive four Es of CRR — engineering, education, economic incentives and enforcement — are distributed across various agencies and organizations. Perhaps the fire department manages building plan review (engineering), the public health department has a child passenger safety program (education/engineering), the private hospital system provides fall risk assessments (education), nonprofits may lobby to fund grants for programs (economic incentives), and a law enforcement agency might write tickets for code violations (enforcement).
The single reactive E (emergency response) has historically been the purview of fire departments, and while both fires and civilian injury from fire have remained consistent problems for most communities (NFPA, 2025), it’s also true that citizen scrutiny on government spending and discontent about wasteful spending on reactive programs is increasing compared to past sentiments (Semuels, 2021).
As firefighter wages increase and many Americans struggle to make ends meet, some citizens are drawing attention to fire department budgets and asking for tangible evidence of a return on investment (Noble, 2025). Many fire departments struggle to provide strong data or evidence that they are significantly improving community outcomes, instead offering weak output metrics such as the number of calls for service or the number of fires, or anecdotal narratives that claim success but cannot be quantified. While these metrics indicate activity, they do not necessarily demonstrate an improvement in community safety, something that savvy community leaders and watchdogs are increasingly attuned to.
Why reactive models are no longer enough
Taxpayers are starting to notice that it’s costing millions of dollars to fund programs that have little obvious tangible benefit to them. As communities insist on more transparency from their public safety agencies and demand concrete benefits in exchange for their tax dollars, CRR presents a unique opportunity for the fire service. Proactive programming to prevent someone’s worst day from ever happening dovetails well with the primary mission of emergency response, which has historically been the focus of most fire departments.
Becoming a comprehensive risk reduction hub
To leverage the supermarket analogy, it’s time for the butcher to start selling bread, produce, pharmaceuticals and dry goods. If they don’t, they risk becoming obsolete and losing both community support and funding.
If the baker centralizes grocery shopping before the butcher does, the butcher will go out of business. If public health centralizes proactive risk reduction services before the fire service does, the fire service will have to hang its hat on an expensive and cumbersome reactive service model that is increasingly less palatable to taxpayers, who more than ever expect a progressive public safety agency to proactively analyze and prevent risks as well as respond to emergencies.
Evolving into a comprehensive risk reduction hub requires investments in areas that many fire departments aren’t accustomed to. Today, fire departments spend millions on apparatus for rare high-rise rescues but hesitate to fund proven, low-cost items like smoke alarms, car seats or handrails that deliver clear returns for community safety.
Moving forward, those fire departments may need to invest in training for building plan reviewers or code inspectors, or make budgetary adjustments to purchase supplies for a fall prevention program. Staff assignments might focus on risk reduction first and emergency response as an ancillary function, rather than the inverse.
This diversification of service delivery models is especially important for agencies that do not provide EMS because demand for out-of-hospital medical care can help keep those agencies financially buoyant during tough economic times. Fire departments that provide only first response or no EMS at all will eventually struggle to justify large budgets.
Overcoming barriers to change
Some would argue that this is outside the mission of the fire department. I will argue that keeping a community safe begins well before the alarm goes off, and those who truly believe in the values of community safety find it obvious that preventing an emergency fits squarely within the mission of a fire department.
If the fire department is going to send a truck to an emergency after it has occurred, it should have a program in place to help prevent such emergencies from happening in the first place. While there are many cultural, regulatory and political barriers to this evolution, the stakes are worth the effort it will take to evolve into the public safety agencies of the future.
CRR secures the future
The fire service cannot afford to be complacent and assume that revenue streams will not change in the current volatile political climate. Fire service leaders must prepare themselves to defend and justify their budgets, and proactive CRR is the most sensible community gap to fill.
Developing strategic CRR programs based on local community risk keeps a fire department relevant, essential and valuable to the community, which translates into strong arguments to maintain funding when the cuts inevitably come. Forward-thinking leaders are preparing not only for the needs of their community today, but also for the needs of tomorrow, and CRR is an essential part of that plan.
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REFERENCES
- National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). (2025). Fire loss in the United States. NFPA Research.
- Noble, T. (2025, May 17). Beaumont citizens speak out against firefighters’ union. Beaumont Enterprise.
- Ross, A. (2016, September 9). The surprising way a supermarket changed the world. TIME.
- Semuels, A. (2021, September 14). As wildfires burn, are U.S. cities spending too much on their fire departments? TIME.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Landon A. Churchill, BS, CFO, NRP, FSCEO, CFE, ECO, is the deputy chief of Strategic Services for the Spring Fire Department – Harris County Emergency Services District No. 7 in Texas. He leads organizational planning, accreditation, quality improvement and CRR programs that have earned both state and national recognition. Additionally, Churchill teaches paramedic students at Lone Star College. As a faculty member with Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX), Churchill facilitates the Support That Saves program, guiding agencies in building peer-support teams to strengthen first responder mental health. He also serves with the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS), deploying with Disaster Medical Assistance Teams to provide care during large-scale crises and disasters. Nationally, he contributes through the International Association of Fire Chiefs’ Volunteer and Combination Officers Section (VCOS), where he helped develop and now teaches in the flagship Critical Thinking Academy, a comprehensive leadership development program that prepares the next generation of fire service leaders. Churchill earned his bachelor’s degree in fire and emergency management from Purdue University Global and is pursuing his master’s degree in public administration.
