It might be useful to examine the social side of the fire problem to see if there are any elements that should be considered regarding fire department deployment. A word of caution, however: The discussion of social vulnerability may introduce some politically unacceptable arguments. It's very important for practitioners of this type of analysis to abstain from any consideration that social vulnerability is related to causation. The purpose behind reviewing demographics is to look at the potential for call frequency and severity, not to fix blame for what prompted the call in the first place.

How much do you know about the census information for your community? The census, while out of date most of the time, is still one of the most fundamental means to describe a community's social stratification. While no single social or economic stratum is more important than another, this information can help fire agencies identify where potential calls for service might originate and what they may entail.

Census data will reveal the following factors about a community: population, ages, number of males and females, number of people in a household, number of single-parent households, annual household income, ethnic background, language spoken in the home, vocation, and level of education.

The census shows that communities have as many similarities as they do differences. For example, in studying fire departments, I have found that some communities have a much larger population of senior citizens. It doesn't take a quantum leap to hypothesize that senior citizens probably will place a higher demand on EMS than middle-aged folks would. Of course, this supposition would need to be proved by a community's data, but in general, an analysis of social vulnerability would reveal a hierarchy of factors that can illuminate the nature of a fire department's service problem.

Take something as simple as the number of people per home. If a district has 1,000 homes and the census says that the average family contains 2.87 people, then it's reasonable to expect that there will be 2,870 people in that area. An examination of the district's response data might show the average number of calls generated by a population of 1,000 people is 65. For planning purposes, project those same 2,870 people as equaling 2.8. With the factor of 65 responses per 1,000 residents, it would be reasonable to expect that the social factors in that particular neighborhood would generate 182 emergency events per year.

What if a new housing complex is built in that same area? A high-rise, low-rent apartment house that adds another 1,000 people to the population would seem to increase the workload by an additional 65 calls just for that one building. But maybe not, as that scenario puts projections on some trickier ground. What if you had two identical neighborhoods with 1,000 homes each, but one set of homes has a median assessed value of $750,000 and the other has a median of $85,000? Would you expect there to be some differences in the social vulnerability between these two neighborhoods?