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New FIRE Act Grant Period. New Calls to Kill It.
Funding to this program has been reduced every year since 2001 and there have been efforts to kill the program entirely.
It doesn’t help our case when you read statements such as this one taken from a report by Dr. David B. Muhlhausen.
The Findings
Overall, the CDA report finds that fire grants, including grants that subsidize the salaries of firefighters, had no impact on fire casualties. Indeed:
- AFG grants used to purchase firefighting equipment, vehicles, and fitness equipment failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, and civilian injuries;
- FP&S grants that funded fire prevention and safety projects failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, and civilian injuries; and
- SAFER grants that subsidized firefighter salaries failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, and civilian injuries.
Read the entire report here:
www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2499.cfm
It doesn’t help our case when you read statements such as this one taken from a report by Dr. David B. Muhlhausen.
The Findings
Overall, the CDA report finds that fire grants, including grants that subsidize the salaries of firefighters, had no impact on fire casualties. Indeed:
- AFG grants used to purchase firefighting equipment, vehicles, and fitness equipment failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, and civilian injuries;
- FP&S grants that funded fire prevention and safety projects failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, and civilian injuries; and
- SAFER grants that subsidized firefighter salaries failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, and civilian injuries.
Read the entire report here:
www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm2499.cfm
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by richard wolfersteig on
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i think we have more stress than others
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Permalink Reply by Allen Wahlstrom on
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who is we?
firefighters in general?
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Permalink Reply by Vic Silverfish on
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This is not true. If statistics are used properly, they will always show the same result. The only way to misuse the statistics is to either game the system (usually through careful cherry picking of data) or misrepresent the results.
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I'll discount his credibility:
1) He is writing (and has a history of writing for) a biased organisation. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank and will always favour the elimination of non-defence spending.
2) Dr. Muhlhausen's education is from a string of second and third tier universities (UMBC, Frostburg) and he is currently an adjunct at George Mason in Northern Virginia.
3) His background reflects a long-standing bias against government programs. Check out his previous employer http://www.calvertinstitute.org/
I've read the link you posted, and am preparing a longer rebuttal of his findings. Keep an eye on the comments section
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I've finally read Dr. Muhlhausen's summary that was posted above. Whilst it's hard to argue with the results, I think the study is measuring the wrong things. Fire deaths, LODDs, and other casualties are rarities, and for this reason, it is difficult to draw trends from them.
Evaluating a grant's effectiveness based on fire deaths and injuries may not be the most appropriate measure. I am currently part of a rural department that runs about 100 calls/year. We see a fire-related death maybe once every 4-8 years, so it's almost impossible to measure our effectiveness by that statistic. If you gave me a stack of cash, how could I measure it's impact?
1) Equipment downtime - Were we able to significantly improve the reliability of our apparatus and power tools?
2) Incident staffing - was the grant able to reduce the number of understaffed responses?
3) Fitness - if we are giving a grant for fitness, everyone needs to establish a baseline and prepare for periodic assessments. I don't expect a brigade full of Olympic athletes, but there should be some improvement if the taxpayers are buying a bunch of kit
4) Accreditation - has the department realised an improvement in it's training stats and members carrying advanced accreditations?
5) Property saved - this is the big one for the NSW Rural Fire Service. How much stuff didn't burn because of our efforts? I have listed this last because I think it is almost impossible to control for all of the confounding factors.
Bonus round - for a volunteer department: how much would all of this cost if you had a paid staff? Even part time? Is maintaining a volunteer staff, even if it is only part-time, a cost effective approach to providing fire protection?
Please add your comments to this! These types of questions are key to our profession and we need to get everyone's input. feel free to comment on my page, or send me a private message.
Well thought out abuse is always welcome!
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