The fire service needs to move beyond being a reactionary industry. We can save many lives and enhance our customers' quality of life if we focus more of our energy in the area of prevention.

Proactive prevention has received much more focus outside of the United States. In Japan, the budget for prevention efforts is very close to that of suppression and training initiatives. National attention is placed on personal responsibility for safety, and there are celebrations for safe time periods. The events and performance measures are taken very seriously, and their property and life loss is much lower than in the United States.

Part of the problem is that because we don't have data on how many fires we prevent, we have a hard time justifying requests for more resources. However, there's a way to measure any service; qualitatively analyzing the effectiveness of prevention programs includes the areas of fire and life safety education, fire investigations, and fire inspection programs. Just be very careful not to lend excessive credence to numbers alone.

Priority shift

There's a major difference between delivering a quality program that really changes behaviors and a program that only tallies numbers. If an educational session isn't geared for the particular audience's age, education level, background and experience, or if it isn't interesting enough to hold their attention, it won't be effective.

Educational sessions also need the focus of company personnel to be effective. Does the educator understand the need for interaction to affect the greatest amount of retention for the subject matter? Does the educator have a passion for the work that will be apparent during delivery? Do department leaders demonstrate that they value fire and life safety education, and do they prioritize these initiatives?

Attitudes need to change not only toward education practice, but toward other non-suppression specialities. Do we reward the personnel in inspections, education and investigations to the same degree that we reward those involved in suppression initiatives? Do we see the training for the prevention efforts to be as critical as the preparation for special response teams? Are administrators as well versed in prevention as in suppression and fire tactics? We must ask ourselves these questions and answer them candidly to evaluate the effectiveness of how well we are achieving our top priorities of protecting life and property.

If fire departments focus on the importance of this part and treat fire prevention and life safety programs as a priority from the time that recruits walk in the door, they can begin to make great headway in preventing fires and emergencies. When emergencies do happen, people will be better prepared to react.

The mindset must evolve within our organizations to reach our external customers most effectively. When we begin to build the competencies for carrying forth education initiatives and increase the number of people who see their role in prevention as well as suppression, then we will see vast improvements in the individual behavior of the citizens we serve.

Do our internal customers understand how the parts of the whole work together for the most impact? Leadership must continue to stress the importance of all the cogs in the system. If managers understand all areas of the fire service, and educate through their conversations and actions the importance of each area working together, then we can create future leaders who have a balanced approach to achieving the best results.

Fire departments are pushed to decide how to use their limited budgets, so they must look at how to positively affect those most at risk. If that means more energy is spent to develop strategies on how to reach those who continue to lose property or lives, then we must customize our approach to prevention. By combining efforts with those in the community who have like causes, we can build relationships that will make more efficient use of time, energy and fiscal resources.

Community outreach

The same fire problem exists for most urban communities within the United States. Residential dwellings continue to pose the largest life and property risk. The elderly and young children are the predominant at-risk age groups. Are we evaluating how to minimize those risks? Because the fire service has no inspection jurisdiction in single-family homes, education efforts remain the most effective method for reaching these groups.

Many education programs target the elderly residents of nursing homes. However, fatalities and injuries in this target group most often take place in single-family homes, where the seniors who aren't exposed to the media and who don't get out to many public events live. Senior support programs, neighbors, churches and families are possible resources to reach this group. Another contact is through medical responses to residences, where a quick check for the presence of a working smoke detector can take place.

If the seed is planted early, future generations, too, can become more proactive through safety and prevention mindsets. If they can readily learn computer technology and customarily absorb information at a rapid pace, they can definitely learn to conduct their lives with attention toward safety.

Community outreach also lets the public know what services are available to them, enhances relations between the department and citizens, and opens avenues for further education. Voluntary home inspections, health fair blood-pressure checks, home safety checklists, and smoke detector giveaways where personnel actually install the detectors are great ways to get in the door to educate. Affecting day-to-day behavior is the single most effective way to prevent fires, lower property loss and save lives. Education in businesses carries over to home behavior, and vice versa.

To make fire safety education more proactive, departments need a more aggressive first line of defense. Mandated inspection schedules are a way to get into businesses according to time schedules dictated by the particular code in effect for your jurisdiction.

The greatest difference for the safety of these businesses, their employees and their occupants are in the everyday behaviors of those who work in the premises. Changing the primary role of the inspector to an educator is the way to achieve this far-reaching positive impact. People are much less resistant to a positive approach through teaching. An enforcement demeanor should take place when all other methods fail.

Codes are a minimum guideline to help prevent tragedy. Every code that exists is a reaction to a proven hazard to life or property. Codes don't provide an end-all means of establishing safe conditions for citizens or for firefighters.

However, if there is a positive relationship among the business owner, its occupants and the fire department representative, then most often a case can be made for maintaining more than the minimum guidelines for safety. When people see that inspection programs are about doing the right thing for the safety and well-being of the citizens we serve, and not about forcing compliance without justification, then truly supportive behavior follows in the majority of situations. Consistency for all types of businesses lends credibility to the program and builds integrity within the people responsible for this important calling.

Not all inspections are equal. Do we have people performing inspections that look at each contact as a chance to make a difference in both the workplaces and the homes of the employees they are educating during the visit? Not all fire and life safety programs effectively work on changing behavior in the participants. To make a difference, teaching methods must be understood and valued. Some departments have begun to use professional educators, but those are few and far between.

Data-driven education

Part of a department shift to prioritizing education is the ability to show where the fire problem is for a particular response area. GIS software enables a department to plot where actual fires are taking place, through particular coordinates that form points on a map.

The type of fire can be plotted and indicate accidental or incendiary. The cause can be plotted using different color schemes to indicate broad categories such as electrical, mechanical equipment, cooking, open flame, misuse of heat and so on. Incendiary fires can be plotted according to modus operandi, where the particular method of operation can be indicated. This visual picture then can be used to reveal trends and patterns for possible arsonists or areas in need of education. As the coding becomes more detailed, the overlays for the different maps can be used to create a baseline.

Points also can be plotted based on fire inspection findings. Color-coding can be used for broad areas of inspection violations like exiting problems, electrical violations, mechanical problems, housekeeping violations, and hazardous materials and flammables storage. After establishing an overall visual of the problem areas for fires and inspection violations, you can create targeted education efforts.

Take this scenario. After the first year of plotting the data, there is a clear delineation of single-family dwelling fires in a specific area of town. The majority are accidental and of electrical origin. Past fire investigation reports show that the residences were built during the years that aluminum wiring was used in this particular area of the country.

The data on fire causes shows that, over time, the aluminum/copper connections can loosen from expansion and contraction during heating and cooling. The gap that forms across the connection can cause a high-temperature arcing. This formation creates a slow breakdown of combustibles around the connection. After time, a fire can begin within the hidden wall space. The department may not have recognized the pattern if not for the plotted trend on the GIS mapping, especially if several different investigators were handling the cases.

This data also can be used to do public service announcements to discuss some of the signs of possible electrical problems like flickering lights, an inconsistency in power to a wall outlet, brownouts, hot power sources or charring around an outlet.

After years of measuring the quality of our programs with GIS plotting, customer surveys, community liaison networks and tracking trends with inspection records, we will be able to measure the effectiveness of our efforts. We can overlay the coordinates for the plotted points for education efforts in the areas where our fires and hazards are showing up, so we should see improvements over time if we are educating effectively.

With eyes wide open and minds willing to look at doing things differently, we can begin to move at a pace that the world around us will continue to move. We will be able to demonstrate our progress through qualitative analysis with visual indicators of how we are preventing harm.

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Bttn. Chief Terri L. Wallace is a 15-year veteran of the Greensboro (N.C.) Fire Department, where she is currently assigned to work on diversity, coaching/mentoring and wellness programs, and succession plans. Wallace has an associate's degree in fire protection technology from Guilford Tech Community College and a bachelor's degree in education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.