By Patrick Coughlin, EFO
When the economic downturn of 2008 threatened to bankrupt cities, city leaders did not spare fire department budgets. Since salaries and benefits are the major fire department expense, many cuts led to layoffs and closed stations.
The economy is recovering, but many city leaders are reluctant to restore the lost positions. The decrease in fire calls over the decades is a contributing factor.
The notion that fewer fire incidents warrant smaller crews and less apparatus is misguided. Fires will occur. When they do, under-staffed fire departments will be less effective at stopping losses and keeping occupants safe.
It will also jeopardize firefighter safety.
There are tools available that can improve a fire chief’s ability to restore positions or maintain current company staffing. However, many fire chiefs continue to rely upon four general predictions of:
- Longer travel times.
- Higher property damage.
- Reduced civilian and firefighter safety.
- Potential increases in fire insurance.
Those impacts seem obvious, but they share a key deficiency; they lack numbers. City leaders can grasp things like budget items, crew size and number of stations because they are tangible.
Generalities like “higher property damage” and “less safety” are not tangible, and thus fail to be convincing. The following resources allow fire chiefs to quantify the effect of smaller crews and fewer apparatus on their fire suppression capability.
NFPA 1710 and 1720
National Fire Protection Association 1710 Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments is the first resource. It sets minimum crew sizes on career departments that are needed for first-alarm assignments to effectively handle structure fires.
NFPA 1720 does the same for volunteer departments. The other resources are studies by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that validate the crew size and response time requirements in NFPA 1710 and 1720.
The NFPA technical committees studied a common fire scenario in homes. Based upon its growth rate and speed, they determined the number of firefighters, apparatus and arrival times needed to operate effectively.
Structure fires require that several critical tasks be performed either simultaneously or be highly coordinated. An example is advancing the attack line. It must be coordinated with ventilation.
Advancing it too soon will cause the fire to blow back at the attack crew. Advancing it too late allows the fire to gain oxygen and grow out of control. Another example is water supply. It must be established quickly enough after operating the attack line to keep the booster tank from going empty.
The number of firefighters, apparatus and response times needed for a first-alarm assignment to perform the required critical tasks is called an effective response force.
NIST reports 1661 and 1797
NIST’s Technical Note 1661, Report on Residential Fireground Field Experiments, was published in April 2010. Using a two-story, 2,000-square foot detached home, analysts varied the number of firefighters per apparatus and arrival times to perform the critical tasks for a fire in a second-floor bedroom.
They then studied the impact of those differences on fire growth, property damage, and occupant and firefighter safety. For example, one finding on page 52 shows that “according to the study deployment protocol (NFPA 1710), the two- and three-person crews were unable to assemble enough personnel to meet this standard.”
NIST’s Technical Note 1797, Report on High-Rise Fireground Field Experiments, was published in April 2013. Analysts used a 13-story office building to create four fire scenarios on the 10th floor, varied crew sizes and arrival times, and the impact on occupant survivability, firefighter safety and property damage.
One of its conclusions on page 99 was that “when assessing task end times and incrementing crew size by a single firefighter, (i.e., 3 to 4, 4 to 5, and 5 to 6), the largest time improvements are seen when going from crew size 3 to 4.”
Using the resources
The NFPA and NIST documents enable fire chiefs to describe changes in suppression capabilities with scientifically supported data. Chiefs can do so by taking these steps.
- Assign each structure to a risk level based on the number of critical tasks needed to be an effective response force.
- On a map, show which structures and areas are covered by effective response forces and those that are not.
In my experience, civilians grossly overestimate their fire department’s capabilities. The data and map do more than make intangible concepts like safety levels tangible.
They present city leaders and civilians with a reality check that can guide them as they decide upon the level of fire protection they are willing to support.