The weak economy means vacant buildings and unmaintained fire systems, which will lead to increased property loss and injury to firefighters and citizens, said Sherri Wilcox, a fire inspector with Las Vegas Fire and Rescue. Wilcox said many cash-strapped building owners are unable to sell empty properties, and they inevitably let fire prevention slip. In addition, business owners have lost their homes and have moved into commercial structures where suppression crews wouldn’t expect to find people in the middle of the night.  As a result, chiefs need to adapt fire suppression tactics and make sure crews are prepared for the unexpected, she said.

“It is important to communicate with suppression crews that their normal training may be to approach a strip center fire from the outside because they are not anticipating somebody but times have changed,” Wilcox said. “So chiefs need to keep suppression crews as informed as possible to be prepared and have the equipment ready.”

Wilcox said residential structures may not fit the profile typically practiced in live-fire training. Fire crews may find vacant properties that are used as storage units by landlords. Instead of furniture and food, firefighters may encounter drums of paint or solvent that cause faster, more toxic burning fires, she said.

Fire inspectors have records on unoccupied buildings or code violators, and can work with fire chiefs using in-house mapping software systems to map out high-risk areas, Wilcox said. This can be particularly helpful if chiefs are considering scheduling brown outs.

“We can help document where vacant properties are concentrated, so that if a fire chief is considering brown outs or trying to schedule them, they can take into account the vacant properties not just run volume from several years ago,” Wilcox said.

To support the effort, Wilcox said it’s imperative for chiefs to ensure fire-prevention divisions are included in their 2011 annual operating budget. Fire prevention and code enforcement reduces loss of property and life, even though it is impossible for her to measure the number of fires stopped or injuries prevented. However, she said recommends chiefs can use overall fire-dollar loss comparisons to justify prevention divisions.

“I’d encourage those in charge of budgeting to try to consider the end result of the fire prevention divisions,” Wilcox said. “In our city, we’ve been able to show we have a lower overall fire-dollar loss than comparable cities and that’s a combination of prevention and quick suppression activity. So my recommendation is to use that total fire dollar loss compared to other cities to show a team effort of the department, not just one single division.”