Putting 170 of some of the fire industry's top thinkers together with the task of finding ways to lower fire loss is a tall order. And it's one that Jim Crawford, fire marshal for the city of Vancouver, Wash., is attempting with Vision 20/20. The group held its first full-on face-to-face meeting in Washington, D.C., last month.

How did Vision 20/20 begin?

We invited what I jokingly call the usual suspects: the [IAFC], the [IAFF], the NFPA, the International Code Council, National State Fire Marshals, International Fire Marshals, and so forth. A day of meetings led to what we're really talking about, an actionable plan. We need a strategic vision. That led to a grant application. The Institute of Fire Engineers stepped up to the plate to serve as our founding grant applicator. Once we got that, we formed the steering committee and moved forward with the planning process.

How much money did you get and what are you using it for?

We got about $238,000. Most of that went to pay for people to attend the physical forum. We also received about, $25,000 in direct cash contributions. Each one of the state fire marshals and inspection associations sent us a check for $500 [total $3,000] to support the Web forum that we did. And there are all kinds of in-kind contributions, which we'll tabulate.

Will this have an end date or be ongoing?

I foresee it as ongoing. The challenge is how to make it ongoing. The grant is for one year. In the worst-case scenario this could die if come August the money ran out and nobody is interested any more. We have applied for another grant oriented toward best practices and smoke alarms, things along that line. We are also looking for other sponsors. I can envision future versions of Vision 20/20 continuing on where most of the people pay their own way. The future is anything but assured, but there is so much energy and passion for this topic that even if we didn't get federal funding, I don't think it will go away.

What does the end product look like?

The end product is two things. One is the report [naming] the areas that need work right now — the five strategies. That is not enough, because that is nothing more than another report that can sit on a shelf. The other product is the actions that people are willing to take as a result of the meeting. The steering committee meets again in June with the final report due in August. Between now and then, we'll start organizing the report and the results of the forum in D.C. Then we'll start picking off low-hanging fruit; things that are probably more readily doable because there are organizations behind them already. My guess is that there will be some actionable items done before the report is finalized.

How will you disseminate the report?

It will be available to every fire department from our Web site [www.strategicfire.org]. But frankly, we don't have enough money to send everybody a copy. What we have is a great network. I have no reservation or fear at all about word getting out about the product. We can get one into every state, but we can't get one into every fire department.

What are the five strategies?

Advocacy is one, basically raising the profile of prevention with policy-makers and decision-makers. The next one was sustained, multifaceted educational social marketing campaign; a combination of education, social engineering and social marketing is where you get to the cigarette issue. It was only a few years ago where you smoked on a plane. It was OK to smoke on a plane, and now it is not. It takes some time to get there and that is what this is getting at. The next one, shift the organizational culture in the fire service so that prevention is accepted and supported as a primary service for public safety, that's huge. Promote and leverage new and existing technologies to support enhanced fire and life safety, was the fourth one. The last one is about codes and standards. That is basically about the fire service getting more involved in the codes- and standards-making process.

How do you keep such a large group moving in one direction?

It is a challenge. You get 170 leaders in a room and its like herding cats; it is hard to get people to come to consensus. It was very difficult the first day. People wanted to talk; they've got their own ideas about what needs to happen. So we did our best to corral everybody into the five strategy areas and then broke them off and let them talk in smaller groups. That worked well. I'm not naïve enough to think that 170 people walked out of that room all singing the same thing. I'm confident there is an overall agreement that these are paths that need to be addressed and we can work collectively. We know that the human race is capable of more than what we are doing in the United States right now.