While we try to promote fire safety and public education year round, October traditionally is the month in which these activities hit their peak, particularly around Fire Prevention Week.
Being a few weeks into the new school year, October is the perfect time to perform state-mandated observed and timed fire evacuation drills. The weather is right for students to go outside without coats, and the schools should have had ample opportunities to practice their drills beforehand. October also provides an opportunity for departments to visit within the schools and conduct some age-specific public-education programs for the students.
Also during October, many departments host open houses at their stations, which not only lets citizens visit and observe equipment, personnel and training, but also allows fire department personnel to discuss their services.
All of these activities require preparation and some expense. So with all the budget-crunching, how can departments stretch their public-education dollars to ensure year-round programs?
The answer: By going back to what I like to call "Fire Safety and Public Education: 101," fire departments can accomplish these goals even in tough economic times.
First, look at your latest annual statistics. If you use any of the packaged fire-reporting software in a NFIRS format, there usually are several summary reports that show the number and types of emergencies to which you have responded during the year. I use the statistical report that follows NFPA's reporting format, which offers the number of runs by the category of the emergency. This is typical of the summaries usually provided with most software packages.
What you've labeled in the report as the nature of your fire or EMS call is what you'll get out as a category in the summary. The old saying, "Garbage in, garbage out" applies. Using several different descriptions for similar types of runs may hide the true nature of the call, and I'll show an example that I ran across in a moment. If you do not use any reporting software, chances are that you can gather your statistics by looking through the written copies of your fire and EMS reports for the last year and find a pattern regarding the nature of your typical responses.
For last year, our fire reports showed that the most frequent type of response in our community was to kitchen fires. Some of you may find your most frequent fires are caused by heating equipment, smoking materials or candles, but ours were clearly cooking related. More than 60% of our residential structure fires originated in the kitchen. It became even more evident when we added in the runs labeled "food on the stove" and for "automatic fire alarms" those that were caused by smoke from burnt food in microwaves or other kitchen appliances. Those categories are the "hidden" data that you may have to include for a full accounting of your reports.
Once you've looked at the data and determined the types of fires you'd like to reduce, it is helpful to also decide on a theme that allows you to make it a year-round fire-safety program. We decided on the theme, "Don't invite us to dinner!" Our fire-prevention literature, banners and press releases emphasized several key points related to the chosen theme:
- Cooking demands your full attention
Don't leave the kitchen while cooking food on the stove. If you have to leave for more than a minute, turn off the stove. Regularly check items cooking in the oven. Don't cook if you're tired or used alcohol or medications that can make you tired. Have a pot lid handy. If a fire starts, slide the lid over the pan to smother the fire, and turn off the burner. If the oven catches fire, keep the door closed and turn off the oven.
- Neat, clean and tidy
Keep curtains, towels and other combustibles away from the stove. Wipe up spills to avoid grease build-up and periodically clean the oven. Turn pot handles inward to avoid them being bumped or tipped over. Declare a 3-foot "kids-free zone" around the stove. Check your smoke detectors monthly and change your batteries when you change your clocks.
- If you have a kitchen fire
Call 911 to have us check to be sure its out. We'll come to remove the smoke and even help with clean-up. If it's something really good you're cooking, invite us to stay for dinner.
Some of you also may have special public-education needs for other types of occupancies. For example, previously we had programs designed to ensure that businesses know the issues related to false alarms from automatic fire-detection systems due to malfunctions, poor maintenance or inadequately trained employees. We emphasized that every alarm received must be treated as real until we could verify it was false, and that needless responses place both the lives of firefighters and the public in danger. As an aside, some businesses and residents didn't begin to take us seriously until an ordinance was passed allowing both the police and fire departments to charge for more than two false alarms annually from the same location.
The other business-related safety topic you may wish to consider is the need to have street addresses clearly posted on or near buildings. This is especially true for national chain stores and restaurants where more than one of the same chain may be located on the same street within your jurisdiction. Addresses are again becoming more and more important to provide accurate locations, as cell phones increasingly are being used to report emergencies; indeed, cell phones today are used to report 70% of fire and medical emergencies. Moreover, we've grown accustomed to the benefits of the address locator associated with enhanced 911, but not ever public-safety answering point is equipped to process such data. Thus, without the address clearly visible, there can be confusion as to the exact location of the emergency. This address program is an ongoing effort for our fire inspector as he makes commercial occupancy inspections.
For our year-round, school fire-safety program, we emphasize the importance of working smoke alarms in the home coupled with a planned and practiced exit drill. This fits well with the fire drills at school and elementary-aged students tend to remember the safety message once they tell their parents about the school fire drill. Our approach changes as students get older, and places more and more emphasis on individual actions.
How can your department continue to distribute fire-safety literature on a tight budget? Both the USFA and the NFPA offer free materials for download from their Web sites. Obviously there are costs related to printing these materials in quantities sufficient to distribute in your response area. Try finding a local sponsor that would trade the printing cost for advertising. This could be a local insurance agency or, in the case of cooking safety, the local grocery or chain store. I once was successful in getting a large chain to put a fire-safety message on its paper shopping bags. With reusable cloth bags gaining popularity, the idea may be worth exploring in a new form.
Whatever budgetary difficulties you may be facing, it is very important not to abandon your fire-safety and public-education efforts. It may be trite to say, but we never know the fires, injuries or deaths we prevent through public education. Our challenge is to maintain these efforts using creative cost-saving methods and new alliances.
Chief Robert R. Rielage, CFO, EFO, MIFireE, is the chief of Wyoming (Ohio) Fire-EMS, a 78-member combination fire department bordering Cincinnati. He previously served as the fire marshal of the state of Ohio. A graduate of the Kennedy School's Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government at Harvard University, Rielage holds a master's degree in public administration from Norwich University and is the immediate past-president of the Institution of Fire Engineers-USA Branch. He is a member of the FIRE CHIEF Editorial Advisory Board.
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