Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the International Association of Fire Fighters now offer cliff notes for fire chiefs, firefighters and public officials that summarize results of a landmark study on the effect of the size of firefighting crews on the ability of the fire service to protect lives and property in residential fires.

The Report on Residential Fireground Field Experiments, published by NIST last April quantified the effects of crew sizes and arrival times on the fire service’s lifesaving and operations for residential fires. The new version offers chiefs a user-friendly way to access the information to educate public officials and managers about crew sizes and residential fire services, said Jason Averill, one of the study’s principal investigators. Averill said the educational toolkit was developed to provide policy-makers with a quantitative and qualitative understanding of the research.

“It was really to digest [the information] down to the basic findings,” he said.

Averill said the toolkit contains a bound copy of the report; a brochure of the executive summary for use in public meetings; a DVD with side-by-side video comparing the timing of various tasks for different crew sizes; fact sheets on key findings; time-to-task results. It also includes the effect of crew size on the time to apply water on a fire, the fire growth rate and occupant exposure to toxins.

“The idea is that there are certain questions that fire chiefs and city or county managers may have, and what we’ve attempted to do — based on anticipating those questions — is summarize how our report addresses some of those questions,” he said.

The toolkit was funded by the Assistance to Firefighters grant program and included contributions from the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the Commission on Fire Accreditation International and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It may be requested by sending an e-mail to NIST or the IAFF, Averill said.