According to a study measuring the economic impact of firefighter injuries released last week by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, about 80,000 U.S. firefighters a year are injured. The total economic burden to the nation for addressing and preventing firefighter injuries is $2.7 billion to $7.8 billion per year, the report estimates.

“Each year tens of thousands of firefighters are injured while fighting fires, rescuing people, responding to hazardous materials incidents, and training for their job,” states The Economic Consequences of Firefighter Injuries and Their Prevention. “While the majority of injuries are minor, a significant number are debilitating and career-ending. Such injuries exact both a great human toll and financial toll.”

NIST’s Building and Fire Research Laboratory provided a grant to TriData Corp. of Arlington, Va., to conduct the study. TriData’s research team arrived at the $2.7 billion to $7.8 billion figure by applying national firefighter injury data to two relevant scientific studies on injury costs, looking primarily at workers compensation payments and other insured medical expenses, long-term care, lost productivity, the administrative costs of insurance and other factors.

That estimate doesn’t include many indirect costs, such as labor spent investigating firefighter injuries, the cost of training firefighters, physical fitness and wellness programs, or what fire departments pay in medical insurance for firefighters. One estimate, based on an NFPA report that included court settledments to injured firefighters and a variety of other costs produced an estimated cost of $16.7 billion per year.

“The main issue is that there is a large uncertainty in that number, but it is a big number,” said William Grosshandler, chief of the NIST Fire Research. “To put that in perspective, the number that we use normally for direct fire losses due to fire in a year for our own internal discussions is about $10 billion. We would call this an indirect loss or expense, so when compared to the toll of direct losses of fire in a year, it’s a significant number.”

Grosshandler said the study is believed to be the first comprehensive examination of the economic losses caused by firefighter injuries. NIST, the U.S. Fire Administration and the National Fire Protection Association have been tracking firefighter deaths and civilian deaths from fires and their economic impact for many years, “but we had not really seen a good, well-thought-out, scientifically defensible study on how much injuries to firefighters were costing this country,” said Grosshandler.

The purpose of the study was to quantify what firefighters injuries cost so that figure can be compared to the expenses associated with preventing and mitigating injuries. BFRL often evaluates new technologies that may help reduce firefighter injuries, Grosshandler explained.

Chief David Daniels of Fulton County (Ga.), chairman of the Health, Safety and Survival Section of International Association of Fire Chiefs, said the report is a particularly important one for the fire service, and especially for fire department leaders.

“For many years fire departments have suffered in silence with the impact of the 80,000 plus injuries every year,” Daniels said. “This report can be an important tool to help fire chiefs make an objective case for the importance of prevention of injuries and saving nearly a billion dollars to our nation's economy. It’s also an important first step towards providing data for the fire service's renewed interest in research as a vehicle to reduce injuries and deaths in our industry."

The report breaks down the cost of firefighter injuries and methods for preventing injuries from many standpoints. Fire departments can use information in the report to estimate the cost implications of the firefighter injuries that occur, and of the measures designed to prevent them. “The first step is to assemble and evaluate departmental injury data over several years and then develop a specific injury profile reflecting the department’s actual experience, rather than relying on industry or national averages,” the report writers noted. “Fire officials can then apply cost factors to the injury data and estimate the overall loss picture for their department.”