“(Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam) Thiel learned through a journalist that firefighters had raced to a blaze that day in early 2017 and spotted a man hanging from a third-floor window as dark smoke billowed above him. Because it took fewer than 20 minutes to both snuff out the flames and rescue the man, the fire wasn’t counted in the department tally of structure fires — and didn’t make its way to the commissioner’s office. ‘If this happened anywhere else, they would still be talking about it,’ Thiel said of the dramatic rescue.” (Vargas 2019)
The Philadelphia Inquirer article describes the impact of moving away from the long-running “Ace Jobs” criteria – only counting those structure fires that took more than 20 minutes and needed at least a 1¾-inch-diameter hose to extinguish.
Commissioner Thiel required the department to follow national standards classification of fire and ems incidents. The impact was over a tripling of reported cooking fires.
FireCARES experience
A local definition of a structure fire that is different from a national classification also showed up when the FireCARES project started with another large east coast fire department. Fire-Community Assessment Response Evaluation System is a “big data” analytical system providing important information to fire service and community leaders about their local fire department and the risk environment.
FireCARES includes more than a decade of research on structure fires and related injuries and death, as well as building footprints, housing, and mobile home units, public health and census data, and vulnerable populations. An example of the output is the Camden, NJ, Structure Fire Probability and Risk Assessment from 2018.
The highest probability levels of structure fires are located around the Fire Stations of Engine 1, Squad 7, Engine 8, and Engine 10. (Based on a GIS study of Risk Assessment & Response Capabilities Analysis of the Camden Fire Department – 2018)
Fire service administrators and managers need to speak with precision about the department’s workload using national standard classifications. We need to show “apple-to-apple” comparisons.
For more information:
Sanders, Russ; Otto Drozd; Lori Moore-Merrell Ph.D.; Tom Jenkins and Billy Goldfeder. (2019 January 14) The Data-Driven Fire Department: Using Analytics to Improve Operations and Reduce Firefighter Risks. (webinar) Irving CA: Lexipol LLC.
Moore-Merrell Ph.D., Lori; Thomas Breyer; John Celmer and Francesco De Bernardis. (2018 September) Fire Department Response Capability, Performance and Systems Resilience. Quincy, MA: Urban Fire Forum.
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Vargas, Claudia (2019 September 18) Why Philly structure fires doubled and response times worsened. The Philadelphia Inquirer
Featured Image: David Maialetti/Philadelphia Inquirer – March 2019 fatal fire.