There's an adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. When applied to the fire service, the wisdom of this is well-known. But getting a handle on how much prevention is being doled out across the country is a completely different matter.

Attendees at this spring's Congressional Fire Services Institute's annual meeting got a peek at some new data that sheds light on this question. The Home Safety Council commissioned the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to conduct the first-ever national fire- and life-safety survey.

The survey was mailed to 7,408 randomly selected fire departments. The sample was stratified based on the population served (more or less than 10,000), into five regions of the country and by department type (volunteer, career, or combination). Of the 1,523 surveys returned, 95% were completed by the chief. The responses came from 364 career, 598 volunteer and 561 combination departments. The respondents were divided nearly in half based on size of population served. The survey was funded by a grant from the Department of Homeland Security.

“We felt there were a lot of things we might surmise about public education and fire departments,” says Meri-K Appy, HSC president. “But it had never been studied in depth.”

The survey asked how many departments were doing fire- and life-safety education, or FLSE, what types were they doing; how departments perceive FLSE; and what is helping or hurting FLSE. What the researchers learned was that nationally 86% of all the departments conduct some FLSE. Only 12% of the departments reported having someone assigned full time to public education; for volunteer departments alone, that number drops to 9%.

“For public education to be done effectively, there had to be someone assigned to do it,” Appy says. “That only 12% of our responding fire departments have somebody assigned full time to [FLSE] is a concern.”

When asked how important FLSE was, 40% of all respondents said it was important or critical. When broken out by department type, responses ranged from 58% for career departments to 35% for volunteer departments — combination departments fell in the middle with 48%. Some of the comments on the survey that the researchers shared showed that respondents felt FLSE was important, but lack of funding and personnel were the main barriers to conducting FLSE.

“We were particularly interested in the volunteer department barriers, and their profile was a little bit different from the national average,” says Eileen MacDonald, one of the Johns Hopkins researchers. “They identified as the [largest] barrier is that they had no identified specialist in the area, FLSE personnel in general and training for those individuals. Not knowing enough about what worked was a barrier, as well as time. When we asked them how satisfied they were with their current activities, on a national weighted estimate, we see that it is right in the middle. We're not sure how to interpret that. Career departments are a little bit more satisfied.”

Larry Sagen was present to hear the results of the survey. Sagen is executive director of Fire 20/20, a research and education group that focuses on recruiting and retaining qualified EMS and firefighters. Sagen asked if some of the issues didn't have to do with the culture in the fire service.

“Do we take a look at how we're hiring people?” Sagen asks. “Does FLSE need to be one of the values people hold to get promoted on a department?”

But not everyone thought the problem was cultural. Kevin McGee, assistant chief and fire marshal for Prince William County, Va., was one of those.

“I take exception to the comment about the culture of the fire service,” McGee says. “The culture that we have is that we can do anything but we can't do everything.”

To assess where his department was regarding FLSE, McGee went to each station and interviewed all of the staff.

“There's a tremendous amount of interest in fire prevention among the firefighters,” McGee says. “But what is the vision? What is it that we want to try to have accomplished?”

To satisfy the need for results, McGee conducted a community risk assessment. He hoped to identify the risks and move resources to intervene in high-risk areas. The problem, McGee says, is that there is no guidance or program to give firefighters the skills to deal with community risk assessment.

What the Johns Hopkins survey found in terms of how FLSE efforts were being deployed was that 80% of the departments conducting FLSE visit elementary schools and 70% hold fire safety events.

Regarding specific activities, fire prevention, fire escape planning, smoke alarms and fire extinguishers topped the list for all three department types. Nearly half of the respondents reported distributing or installing smoke alarms. Ten percent of the departments gave out fire extinguishers, while only about 2% gave away escape ladders.

The Home Safety Council developed the Always Safe at Home Toolbox and is giving it away. The kits have different levels of fire safety geared toward different age groups ranging from preschool children to senior citizens.

“The goal was to figure out a benchmark so that we could improve it,” Appy says. “And then, in time, measure it again to see: Could we really move this deal forward?”

With the survey finished, it appears the difficult tasks reamin ahead.