Fire Prevention Essay

Fire Prevention

Among the many challenges that law enforcement and firefighters face every day in America fires are near the top in terms of danger to the public and to property. In this paper a review of the problems that fires cause -- and the incidences of fires in America -- plus some historical perspective is provided.

America Burning

In 1972, President Richard Nixon established a commission to research and report back to the nation as to the problem of fires in the United States. The report he received from The National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control called "America Burning" explained that each hour about "…300 destructive fires will rage somewhere in this Nation." The financial loss in those 300 fires will be about $300,000 and "…at least one person will have died" while 34 people will be injured, some of them seriously.

The report emphasized that destructive fires in the U.S. (in the 1970s) cost "at least $11.4 billion" and beyond that the losses due to jobs destroyed by fire are not calculable.Citizen deaths caused by these destructive fires are estimated to be upwards of 12,000, the Commission explained. The Commission calls it "appalling" that the richest and most technologically advanced nation in the world "…leads all the major industrialized countries" when it comes to deaths and loss of property from fires. The Commission states that in Canada (in that same time frame) there were reports of 29.7 deaths per million population; in America there were reports of 57.1 deaths per million population.

As to the deaths of firefighters, the Commission explained that the firefighter death rate is 15% greater than the "next most dangerous occupations," which are mining and quarrying. In fact in 1971, for every 100 firefighters working on a building in flames 39.6 of them are injured. Add to those grim statistics the fact that in 1971, 175 firefighters died while doing their jobs and another 89 firefighters died of heart attacks….....