A landmark study
coordinated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
is the first to put numbers to the effect of changing the size of
fire-fighting crews responding to residential fires. Performed by a
broad coalition in the scientific, firefighting and public-safety
communities, the study quantifies the effects of crew sizes and arrival
times on the fire service’s lifesaving and firefighting operations for
residential fires. Until now, little scientific data have been
available.
The research team found that four-person
firefighting crews were able to complete 22 essential firefighting and
rescue tasks in a typical residential structure 30 percent faster than
two-person crews and 25 percent faster than three-person crews. “The
results from this rigorous scientific study on the most common and
deadly fires in the country—those in single-family residences—provide
quantitative data to fire chiefs and public officials responsible for
determining safe staffing levels, station locations and appropriate
funding for community and firefighter safety,” says NIST’s Jason
Averill, one of the study’s principal investigators.
The four-person crews were able to deliver
water to a similar-sized fire 16 percent faster than the two-person
crews and 6 percent faster than three-person crews, steps that help to
reduce property damage and lower danger to the firefighters. The
four-person crews were able to complete search and rescue 30 percent
faster than two-person crews and 5 percent faster than three-person
crews. Five-person crews were faster than four-person crews in several
key tasks. The benefits of five-person crews have also been documented
by other researchers for fires in medium- and high-hazard structures,
such as high-rise buildings, commercial properties, factories and
warehouses.
This study explored fires in a residential
structure, where the vast majority of fatal fires occur. The researchers
built a two-story, 2,000-square-foot test facility at the Montgomery
County Public Safety Training Academy in Rockville, Md. Fire crews from
Montgomery County, Md., and Fairfax County, Va., responded to live fires
within this facility. NIST researchers and their collaborators
conducted more than 60 controlled fire experiments to determine the
relative effects of crew size, the arrival time of the first fire crews,
and the “stagger,” or spacing, between the arrivals of successive waves
of fire-fighting apparatus.
The United States Fire Administration
reported that 403,000 residential structure fires killed close to 3,000
people in 2008—accounting for approximately 84 percent of all fire
deaths—and injured about 13,500. Direct costs from these fires were
about $8.5 billion. Annually, firefighter deaths have remained steady at
around 100, while tens of thousands more are injured.
Researchers from NIST, Worcester Polytechnic
Institute, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the
International Association of Fire Fighters, the Commission on Fire
Accreditation International-RISK and the Urban Institute participated in
the study. The report was funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Assistance to
Firefighters Grant Program and released today in Washington, D.C.,
before the start of the annual Congressional Fire Services Institute
meeting that draws top fire safety officials from across the nation.
For more details, see the NIST news
announcement “Landmark
Residential Fire Study Shows How Crew Sizes and Arrival Times Influence
Saving Lives and Property,” from April 28, 2010 at www.nist.gov/bfrl/fire_research/residential-fire-report_042810.cfm.
The Report
on Residential Fireground Field Experiments, NIST Technical Note
1661, can be downloaded from www.nist.gov/cgi-bin/view_pub.cgi?pub_id=904607&division=866.
Media Contact: Evelyn Brown, evelyn.brown@nist.gov, (301)
975-5661
