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NIST Releases Report on Effects of Firefighting Crew Sizes
EVELYN BROWN
NIST
WASHINGTON D.C. - A landmark study issued today by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows that the size of firefighting crews has a substantial effect on the fire service's ability to protect lives and property in residential fires.
The report is the first to quantify 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 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," said 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 15 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.
"Fire risks grow exponentially. Each minute of delay is critical to the safety of the occupants and firefighters, and is directly related to property damage," said Averill, who leads NIST's Engineered Fire Safety Group within its Building and Fire Research Laboratory.
"Our experiments directly address two primary objectives of the fire service: extinguishing the fire and rescuing occupants," said Lori Moore-Merrell of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) and a principal investigator on the study.
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, Moore-Merrell explained. 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 "low-hazard" structure as described in National Fire Protection Association Standard 1710 (NFPA 1710), a consensus standard that provides guidance on the deployment of career firefighters. The two-story, 2000-square-foot test facility was constructed 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 (vehicles and equipment). The stagger time simulates the typically later arrival of crews from more distant stations as compared to crews from more nearby stations.
Crews of two, three, four and five firefighters were timed as they performed 22 standard firefighting and rescue tasks to extinguish a live fire in the test facility. Those standard tasks included occupant search and rescue, time to put water on fire, and laddering and ventilation. Apparatus arrival time, the stagger between apparatus, and crew sizes were varied.
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 also performed simulations using NIST's Fire Dynamic Simulator to examine how the interior conditions change for trapped occupants and the firefighters if the fire develops more slowly or more rapidly than observed in the actual experiments. The fire modeling simulations demonstrated that two-person, late-arriving crews can face a fire that is twice the intensity of the fire faced by five-person, early arriving crews. Additionally, the modeling demonstrated that trapped occupants receive less exposure to toxic combustion products—such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide—if the firefighters arrive earlier and involve three or more persons per crew.
"The results of the field experiments apply only to fires in low-hazard residential structures as described in the NFPA Standard 1710, but it provides a strong starting point," said Moore-Merrell. Future research could extend the findings of the report to quantify the effects of crew size and apparatus arrival times in medium- and high-hazard structures, she said.
The next step for this research team is to develop a training package for firefighters and public officials that would enable them to have both quantitative and qualitative understanding of the research, a project also funded by FEMA's Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program.
The study's principal investigators were Averill, Moore-Merrell and Kathy Notarianni of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Other organizations participating in this research include the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the Commission on Fire Accreditation International-RISK and the Urban Institute.
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.
The Report on Residential Fireground Field Experiments, NIST Technical Note 1661, can be downloaded here.
Founded in 1901, NIST is a nonregulatory agency of the Commerce Department that promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.
NIST
WASHINGTON D.C. - A landmark study issued today by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows that the size of firefighting crews has a substantial effect on the fire service's ability to protect lives and property in residential fires.
Read the Report:
Report on Residential Fireground Field Experiments
Related
Performed by a broad coalition in the scientific, firefighting and public-safety communities, the study 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.Report on Residential Fireground Field Experiments
Related
- Command Safety: NIST Study to be Issued
- Command Safety: NIST Report, Field Experiments
- FireRescue Magazine: The Good of the Whole
The report is the first to quantify 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 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," said 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 15 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.
"Fire risks grow exponentially. Each minute of delay is critical to the safety of the occupants and firefighters, and is directly related to property damage," said Averill, who leads NIST's Engineered Fire Safety Group within its Building and Fire Research Laboratory.
"Our experiments directly address two primary objectives of the fire service: extinguishing the fire and rescuing occupants," said Lori Moore-Merrell of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) and a principal investigator on the study.
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, Moore-Merrell explained. 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 "low-hazard" structure as described in National Fire Protection Association Standard 1710 (NFPA 1710), a consensus standard that provides guidance on the deployment of career firefighters. The two-story, 2000-square-foot test facility was constructed 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 (vehicles and equipment). The stagger time simulates the typically later arrival of crews from more distant stations as compared to crews from more nearby stations.
Crews of two, three, four and five firefighters were timed as they performed 22 standard firefighting and rescue tasks to extinguish a live fire in the test facility. Those standard tasks included occupant search and rescue, time to put water on fire, and laddering and ventilation. Apparatus arrival time, the stagger between apparatus, and crew sizes were varied.
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 also performed simulations using NIST's Fire Dynamic Simulator to examine how the interior conditions change for trapped occupants and the firefighters if the fire develops more slowly or more rapidly than observed in the actual experiments. The fire modeling simulations demonstrated that two-person, late-arriving crews can face a fire that is twice the intensity of the fire faced by five-person, early arriving crews. Additionally, the modeling demonstrated that trapped occupants receive less exposure to toxic combustion products—such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide—if the firefighters arrive earlier and involve three or more persons per crew.
"The results of the field experiments apply only to fires in low-hazard residential structures as described in the NFPA Standard 1710, but it provides a strong starting point," said Moore-Merrell. Future research could extend the findings of the report to quantify the effects of crew size and apparatus arrival times in medium- and high-hazard structures, she said.
The next step for this research team is to develop a training package for firefighters and public officials that would enable them to have both quantitative and qualitative understanding of the research, a project also funded by FEMA's Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program.
The study's principal investigators were Averill, Moore-Merrell and Kathy Notarianni of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Other organizations participating in this research include the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the Commission on Fire Accreditation International-RISK and the Urban Institute.
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.
The Report on Residential Fireground Field Experiments, NIST Technical Note 1661, can be downloaded here.
Founded in 1901, NIST is a nonregulatory agency of the Commerce Department that promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Luechtefeld on
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Jack/dt, criticizing teachers is not helpful to the fire service. Teachers and fire/EMS have more interests in common than they do in conflict.
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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Daniel,
I'm beginning to think that you're taking this a bit too seriously but nevertheless, please point out where you think I criticized teachers?
In Connecticut every one of the 'items' I mentioned are in fact, facts.
The NEA is "... the largest professional organization and largest labor union in the United States
"The stated mission of the National Education Association is "to advocate for education professionals and to unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world,"[3] as well as concerning itself with the wage and working condition issues common to other labor unions."
So clearly, they are indeed "doing something right for their members."
Again, how was I being critical?
My statement - "But then, I guess people see teaching children in a classroom as more important than saving them in their bedroom." No mention or suggestion of teachers but rather my personal indictment of how most taxpayers see the world.
As for teachers and fire/ems, frankly I would think that fire/ems and sanitation workers are more closely related. No one really gives a damn about either until they fail to show up and do their job, both are involved in aspects of public health and safety, everyone complains about the noise they make and everyone bitches when they come up behind a working garbage truck or fire engine or ambulance.
How often are one or two schools in town shut down to save money? A bad day for a teacher means a headache and 2 glasses of wine, a bad day for a firefighter could be a stay in the hospital or a fancy funeral.
Layoff 5 teachers and that means that 5 classrooms get a little bigger. Lay off 5 firefighters and that means that everyone works that much harder on the fireground and the chance of a quick knock or rescue is further diminished. The two are hardly comparable.
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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Sorry but NIST doesn't drive any standard, set any ISO insurance rates or disseminate financial penalties...
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Permalink Reply by Steven C. Hamilton on
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Unfortunately, as with any STUDY conducted about the fire service, I predict that it will have little to no effect. Agencies have conducted STUDIES on the importance of automatic sprinkler systems and yet the construction industry and government leaders try to find loopholes and circumvent any way around the additional costs. The same thing will happen here. NFPA 1710 has outlined minimum staffing for various apparatus and the type of incidents in which they respond. Again, state and local officials make statements such as "We are not an NFPA state so those regulations do not guide our decisions." The federal government, which has adopted NFPA as the governing regulation for their fire protection agencies, has even refused to recognize NFPA 1710 and implemented their own regulation sighting order of regulatory preference in order to side track guidelines.
I would like to hope that this will turn the tide but all evidence points to the contrary.
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That example won't work with politicians, five bigger classrooms is something that has to be dealt with every day, John Q public has the mentality that having a fire or being saved by the local fireman will never happen to him. So it is not seen as a neccessity of daily survival.
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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Reading the comments here, I will say that I am glad this report is out and does state what the fire service has been saying for years. We fortunately do staff a pump with 4 personnel, but we are the only dept in the area that does. This allows the politicians to make the excuse of "it works for them" as a reason to talk staff reductions. Up to this point, there really were no hard facts and numbers showing a difference in crew staffing, common sense points to the more the better, but too many politicians and bean counters either fail to see that or fail to concern themselves.
Well, how I see this report is this now speaks the language of numbers, which the beancounters and politicians who make decisions use to justify their decisions. This is a tool in the political toolbox to now use to defend current staffing and to tout increases in staffing. This is one part of the battle and as alluded to, doesn't take into account larger crews, which more urban departments utilize, to defend 5 or 6 on a rig. However, this is an important step which helps back up what the fire service has said for years, now we have the numbers.
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Permalink Reply by Vic Silverfish on
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On the flip side, starting fire-fighters earn about as much as a starting teacher, but teachers need to have a Bachelors and usually a Masters degree. Also, fireys get paid overtime and bonus time for weekends and holidays. Teachers don't get paid for coaching teams or doing extracurricular activities, but they are compelled to spend massive amounts of unpaid time on these and on planning/grading/etc.
I've done both, I'd rather be a fire fighter. Teaching is a thankless job that no one respects any more.
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Permalink Reply by John Lewis Perry on
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It stands to reason that 8 hands are better than 6 any day when doing anything. I come from a land where all personell are volunteer and we are luckey to have 4 personell whom are 1403 Certified let alone even 4 who show up on a call at 3:00am. I've been to many a fire, having to meet the fire truck on scene and only 4 show up from my station and another 3 from a mutual aid station, to tackle a single story structure that is 40 percent involved. We have to keep requesting mutual aid stations until we get enough personell to handle the job. All in all, I think it looks good on paper but out here it's wishful thinking
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FETC, I wasn't addressing ISO PPC ratings, I was addressing liability insurance - this falls outside the scope of ISO PPC.
Nonetheless, staffing is an definitely an ISO criterion, worth 7.5% of the PPC total:
"Company personnel — ISO credits the personnel available for first alarms of fire. For personnel not normally in the fire station (for example, volunteers), ISO reduces the value of the responding members to reflect the delay due to decision, communication, or assembly. ISO then applies an upper limit for the credit for manning, as it is impractical for a very large number of personnel to operate a piece of apparatus."
http://www.isomitigation.com/ppc/2000/ppc2007.html
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This isn't a mandate since NIST isn't a regulatory body.
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