An Insidious Disease?
A recent outbreak caused approximately 198 deaths in four months. The medical examiner found pulmonary edema and damage to the trachea, bronchi and alveoli in the upper areas of the lungs. Most of the victims were children, who have been particularly vulnerable to this menace. The disease has turned up throughout the country, and the medical examiner was concerned about the root cause of the disease process. Then the weather began to warm, and the disease diminished in intensity. Yet occasional outbreaks still occur throughout the country.
Diseases emerge and go away, and while this disease killed more than 198 people, it did not reach the threshold necessary to raise public fear. In fact, this disease actually has killed an average of 4,000 per year without national concern because most of the deaths occur one or two at a time.
The disease is residential fire deaths. House fire are no longer feared by most people — in fact, many feel indifferent. People are more afraid of weapons of mass destruction than a frequent threat that can involve anyone at any time. In fact, there seems to be an unusually high number of what NFPA calls catastrophic multiple death fires this year.
Ed Comeau, a technical writer on a range of fire service subjects, started to focus attention on these fires because we have all become just a little too accepting of these deaths. He started keeping track of the multiple death fires and has made the fire events available online. It’s a pretty impressive list for only a little over six month’s data. He also identified a critical gap in available information and noted that such information could be useful to keeping the the threat of fire on everyone’s minds.
There is a saying that “what gets measured gets done.” As a result of Comeau’s life-safety activism, the U.S. Fire Administration has begun to make available daily information about fire deaths nationally. Quick Response: Fire Safety in the News monitors news media outlets to learn of residential fire fatalities nationally. The USFA’s approach is to make available for the media up-to-date information about fires and relevant fire safety information.
Fire chiefs also can play a role in reducing the acceptance of residential fire fatalities by taking tragedies to advocate more attention to the problem. Some departments will place full focus on the fire and send operational firefighters door to door with the teachable moment. If the fire chief shows leadership by expressing concern, it will likely get the attention of local media, elected officials and community leaders, which could offer unanticipated opportunities to talk more about the fire problem and the need for residential sprinklers and working smoke alarms on every level of a home. The fire chief also could benefit from this exposure by being able to talk about what their department needs more of to make the community even safer.
While the disease of fatal fires does not spread through the normal epidemic process it can be as insidious if we ignore and even tolerate it. Is it possible for acceptance of fatal fires to become like crime and blight where tolerance brings about more of the same? Look at how municipalities have dealt with graffiti and other unacceptable social conditions, immediately eliminating the evidence by repainting the surface that was vandalized. Could we do the same for fires by aggressively attacking the root causes when the fires occur?
September 11th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Over 52% of U.S. citizens are now or soon will be protected from the number-one cause of fatal fires. What is it? CARELESS SMOKING. Why don’t the fire chiefs down south follow the rest of the nation and demand fire-safe cigarettes as proposed by the NFPA? We could lower fire fatalities by 10% almost immediately.
September 13th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Mike, I know that this comment is long, but I think you really needed to see what kind of an impact you had with your piece. I forwarded you blog posting to the head of our Community Programs Section in our Fire & Life Safety Division, a young lieutentant with ten years on the job. He responded back to me with the following e-mail. Before you read on, I’d also like to add that I thought your posting was a great piece of work that came at the issue from a very fresh perspective.
This article is excellent, I recently (within the last few months) received a survey from the NFPA inquiring about prevention in our department. While we are heads above many of the departments around us, I was struck when the following question was posed to me: “What percentage of your department’s budget is focused directly on prevention-education/community programs (not plans-review, not inspections and investigations, etc.). The answer was less than 1%, which in actuality the number is more like .00625%. I say this without any tone or mal-intent, it’s just the facts, and something we (Matt Coffin and dozens of other new C.O.’s) don’t think about in the front-seat, or the jump-seat of the fire engine. I guess I’m growing up and out so-to-speak, but it’s scary too, because for now, it’s my ship, strategy wise.
When my front porch changed from Engine 14-A, after two years, to Community Programs/PIO, it began occurring to me that the real impact is in here (Fire & Life Safety Division), not there (Emergency Operations Division), if we are responding to the fire, something must have failed. Right? What was never a thought We missed someone in our educational strategy, maybe we lost a demographic in our narrow focus on the children and the elderly. I love the quote from Mike Loves posting: “What gets measured gets done,” I Furthermore, I agree with the author’s comment to the affect that; “Advocating more attention,” during these incidents should be our goal. The advocacy improves attention, focus, and most importantly, funding! The measurement, increases accountability, and identifies changes in the upper and lower controls, but most importantly, helps demonstrate how the actions affect the outcomes. Last year we saw over 16,600 people and delivered over 680 programs, thanks to MS/Access-Educator Daily Logs, and the MS-Access/Community Programs databases. Each educator enters in their daily activity, not for the purposes of time-task-analysis, but to build the case, to affirm decisions, and more critically to buttress the discontinuation of fruitless activity.
Our goal should be to put ourselves out of business, devoting the balance of our Op’s time gained to training, physical fitness, readiness, pre-planning, and target hazard-site visits. Boy, what a wake up call for a young 28 year-old rookie lieutenant with only two years of Engine C.O. time, and one year in the office. I have had a personal paradigm shift realizing that the mission in here, the office, is just as critical as rolling out on the fire and emergency medical calls for service. I have realized the countless numbers of hours wasted on kitchen table and apparatus-bay banter over things out of my “circle of influence or control,” please don’t shout “Amen” Chief, and don’t kiss your Covey book in front of me (just kidding). It is just that my time, as I look back, would have been better served out in the district talking to citizens about prevention, and preparation, and training up the next C.O.’s to do the same. I would have been better suited to explain the why’s to the rookie. Some of the items you have shared, the YouTube angle, the viral marketing, and so on is something I look at as fresh meat. Keep them articles coming, it is a big help. Our website is in need overhaul, for the community’s sake, and an increase in the use of web-savvy in our educational strategy is a must, we’re way past being behind.
September 14th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Wow Robert. Thanks for sharing those comments. The Lieutenant gets it and I hope he will continue and increase his efforts to take on the lethargy that exists in our service. One thing that is available to pull people together in these efforts nationally is a Yahoo Group called ePARADE (for fire and life safety professionals) and another NFLSE (National Fire and Life Safety Educators) these are active daily groups of information sharing that tend to make the life safety world alot smaller. Stay tuned for the follow-up to that blog entry which I admit to having some attitude.
Mike Love
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