Missed Opportunities
Recently the National Academy of Public Administration released its Department of Homeland Security–commissioned report, Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program: Assessing Performance. I was interested in reading the report, as it had similar themes to an article I had published in January. The academy’s report provides valuable information on a very important subject, and all fire chiefs should read it in detail.
Though there are many useful statistics in the report, I want to bring your attention to an area that the fire service needs to focus a tad more on — the socio-economic demographics of fire. Research is weak in this area and as a result public-education efforts aren’t up to par.
Page 28 of the report states that “African-Americans are three times more likely than whites to die in residential fires.” Recent multiple-fatality fires around the country support that statistic. So why aren’t we doing more to educate this demographic? Why don’t we get the NAACP onboard with our efforts?
Similar logic could be used for educating our elderly population, who might not have the mobility to evacuate during a fire, even if they might have been alerted by their smoke alarms. This population would be best protected by residential fire sprinklers, which would extinguish the fires in the early stages and limit smoke inhalation. So why don’t we sell residential fire sprinkler concept to the AARP?
We don’t educate the public the best that we should; these examples show missed opportunities. We need to educate these organizations about the fire problem and specifically tailor fire department efforts to their members. We have a great opportunity with NAACP and AARP, for example, because these organizations have tremendous political power; when they talk, Capitol Hill listens. We must focus on such issues if we want to better succeed in the 21st century.
Don’t you think support of such organizations could help secure better funding for the fire service?
August 16th, 2007 at 2:51 am
Mr. Mirkhah, your comments about the importance of partnerships to successful fire prevention programs are right on target. But using such partnerships to enhance our political power should not be their primary purpose.
Too much attention is focused on the disparities between the budget allocations for fire prevention (and fire service generally) in comparison to other expenditure priorities. You have previously made an eloquent and well-reasoned case that how much we’re willing to spend says a lot about our priorities. That may be true, but it’s not the whole story either. To the extent that it is true, though, we should look at how spending on other agencies’ programs could help us achieve better outcomes for those at higher risk of suffering fires.
The relationship between money and priorities is important not only in political and policy terms, but at a practical level too. Low socio-economic status has a strong inverse correlation with fire risk. In other words, money, or lack of it, is not the proximate cause of fires. Before we assume that poverty, education, ethnicity or race cause fire risk to increase, we should ask ourselves what it is about the conditions or circumstances in which people find themselves that cause them to suffer more or more serious fires than others do.
Scholarly work and case studies on the risks faced by the poor are not as sparse as one might think, although they are not as accessible as information about the technological aspects of fire risk management. All of this literature makes a clear and rather simple point: People who lack access to opportunities to improve their situation easily are more apt to take risks that others avoid because they feel they have a lot less to lose. That’s something we’ll find it very difficult to change without a great deal of help.
If political action can make a difference to the fire risks faced by the poor, then it will take something more than extra FIRE Act or AFG funding to make it happen. How about a stronger social safety net, more accessible and affordable access to higher education and job training, national health insurance and better opportunities to acquire a green card or citizenship so hard-working people can get a good job? Are firefighters and fire chiefs willing to promote these priorities?
August 16th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Ozzie, great observations and the kind of thought-provoking commentary that all fire & EMS service leaders need to read and hear. Why does it seem that the fire service has such a difficult time “seeing” these potentials for strategic partnerships with such political “heavyweights” as AARP and the NAACP? Keep sounding the alarm!
August 16th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
My friend Kiwichief,
I agree with the intent of your message. Political gains should not be the primary motive for such partnerships. In his book Customer Service, Chief Alan Brunacini encouraged all of us to be nice, help Mrs. Smith and deliver the best possible service to our customers. He deeply believed in the concept and knew it was the right thing to do. The fact that Mrs. Smiths of the world also vote and have an important voice in providing resources for our departments was not the primary motive, but it didn‘t hurt matters either. This was my meaning, as well.
Your assessments about the socio-economical solutions have positive resonance with me, and I agree with your conclusions. Most of us are involved one way or another in solving such ills. But as fire service professionals, our roles are limited to our own area of expertise — fire. Social engineering is too grand of a subject and outside the scope of our organizational expertise. We should focus on what we as a fire service can do to better protect the economically deprived sectors of our population. In this case, I believe that partnerships with more emphasis on public education could be of great value.
August 16th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Thanks for your thoughtful response and clarification of your intentions, Mr. Mirkhah. Our focus on Mrs. Smith should respect the fact that Mr. Jones, who does not use our service directly, also pays for it and might see things far differently from Mrs. Smith. If we do our jobs right, we can play a powerful role in helping them see again how their concerns align with one another.
You probably recall that Chief Brunacini’s focus on customer service echoed a wider call across the public service to improve performance and accoutability. As that discussion unfolded, some important ideas emerged about the difference between public and private goods, and how the alignment between costs and benefits colored perceptions of service and expectations of it. Many commentators now see fire service as a private good not a public good, and see investments in fire services to protect the poor as a way of throwing good money after bad. I think we both disagree with this suggestion, but we need to work hard to overcome such perceptions among the powerful in our communities.
We also seem to agree that a wider public debate concerning the government’s role in assisting the poor is at play here. The fire service may be a marginal player when it comes to some questions of social policy, but only if we choose to remain on the sidelines when these policy debates occur.
If you want a powerful illustration of the influence decisions about fire services can have on wider public policy issues, pick up a copy of Wallace, D. and Wallace, R. (2001), A Plague Upon Your Houses: How New York City Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled, New York: Verso, ISBN 1859842534. This book illustrates just how connected policy questions involving core government services are.
If we see ourselves as separate and apart from these wider questions, then we will always find it difficult to get access to the resources we think we need to get the job done. If, on the other hand, we see questions about things like housing quality, choice and affordability not just as social justice issues but as questions about fire safety, then we can make a big difference in the lives of everyone.
August 17th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
The International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters would be excellent resource to have onboard
for this effort.
August 18th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
In 1994, I completed my master’s thesis on the subject of “The Poor and their need for Fire Services.” While serving as the Fire Chief in Adelanto, CA, I had noticed a disparity in the call volumes of my two stations. One station served much lower income group than the other and ran about twice the number of calls. My research compared about the same number of households in the two districts. After crunching the numbers, it turned out that calls for service were actually three times higher in the low income district, for the same number of housing units. Although I did not try to identify the ethnic makeup of our customers, I would expect African-Americans would need our services more, since so many of them are poor.
The report was provided to the LRC at the National Fire Academy and may still be available for anyone interested in reading it.
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