Excellence in Fire Protection

Dealing with water purveyors

When I contacted my water purveyor about replacing my 5/8-inch to with a ¾-inch, the engineer who responded reviewed the costs. The meter and replacement labor would run a few hundred dollars. That seemed reasonable because they have to replace my old-style meter pit as well. The kicker was their "system development fee" of $2500.00.

The theory of system development fees

The purpose of the fee is to fund increases in capacity. It is based on the reasoning that additional customers increase demand, which requires adding new mains, larger storage tanks, more water treatment plants, etc. By levying the fee on new customers, the purveyor avoids placing the burden on existing ones. When an existing customer requests a larger meter, it is assumed that they will also increase demand and thus should pay the same fee as new customers.

The engineer was not up on fire sprinklers, so I gave a short recap of how they reduce the demand for water. In the event of a fire, I explained, my system would use a couple hundred gallons of metered water as opposed to several thousand gallons of unmetered water that the fire department would use. We left it at that. The engineer would discuss it with her superiors and let me know.

Educating water purveyors

The answer I received was disappointing. They justified the fee for the following reason. Although my sprinkler system itself lowered my home's demand on the public water system, a larger meter would enable me to install a lawn irrigation system, which would increase the demand on the system. Therefore, I needed to pay the fee because I could potentially add to the need for increasing capacity.

It was clear from our conversations that the engineering staff was not aware of the value that fire sprinklers provide in reducing demand on public water supplies. They also were largely unaware of how sprinklers can reduce other infrastructure costs, such as narrower roads and smaller cul-de-sac turnarounds just to name a couple. I requested a meeting with the engineering staff so I could explain how the water district could be part of the solution instead of the problems of sustaining viable places to live and work.

They were very open to meeting with me, and definitely wanted to learn more. Coincidentally, they had recently heard about the new requirements in the International Residential Code and figured that they would have to deal with the issues at some time in the future. They saw my participation as helping them become proactive instead of reactive.

Residential Fire Sprinklers 101

My goal at the meeting was two-fold. First, I wanted to provide documentation to back up my statements. I collected a half-dozen documents, some educational and some with data, and placed them into a presentation binder. I also included items I found about how other water purveyors have dealt with the situation. My other goal was to tell the story of residential sprinklers so they would appreciate how valuable they are to life safety. Instead of lecturing from a bulleted list, I highlighted key parts of each document. As I described the content of each enclosure, the highlighted material gave me my talking points.

I kept my presentation short and sweet, and left the binder so they can study the detailed contents. I came away feeling that they see me as an ally, someone who can help them find a practical solution to the problem with system development fees, just as other water purveyors have. It is going to take time and more meetings, but so far so good. I'll continue reporting on this as things progress.

Residential sprinklers

Residential sprinklers -

It is my belief that residential sprinklers are a key element in achieving fire department excellence. Simply put, fire departments that require sprinklers in homes can manage their community fire risk for less money than comparable fire departments that rely on manual suppression.

There are plenty of Internet-based resources about residential sprinklers. My posts on this subject will not repeat the information that is already published. Rather, they will reflect my personal experience with residential sprinklers.

My sprinkler system –

My 50-year old home is protected with residential sprinklers, which I installed myself several years ago. The water supply is a ¾-inch copper line that goes through a 5/8-inch meter. I knew that the meter was too small to flow the 26 GPM required for a 2-sprinkler flow, so technically the system does not comply with national standards. I compensated by installing the sprinklers close to their minimum spacing. The smaller areas of coverage increase the likelihood that one sprinkler will have the volume to stop a fire. I also added sprinklers in areas that technically require them, such as reach-in closets and bathrooms under 55 square feet.

My sprinkler challenge –

I contacted my water purveyor to get an estimate for upsizing to a ¾-inch meter. I am happy with the system's capability, but I want to learn more about a barrier that is turning people away from sprinkler protection – the often sky-high charges that water purveyors charge for larger meters.

The engineer I spoke with told me that replacing my 5/8-inch meter with a ¾-inch requires that I pay a $2500.00 "system impact" fee in addition to the cost new meter and labor charges for installing it. I explained that my system has actually lowered the impact on the water distribution system because I would use a couple hundred gallons of water to stop a fire - that versus several thousand gallons the fire department would pump for manual extinguishment.

From our conversation, I learned that the system impact fee is based on the premise that larger meters result in higher consumption. I am meeting with the water district staff next week, where my first challenge will be to show them why that premise is false when it comes to residential sprinkler systems. I'll report on my progress.

Fire prevention and the Green movement

It is refreshing to see reports from fire service leaders who see fire sprinklers as a valuable part of the Green movement. Going "Green" means much more than improving energy efficiency. It means building sustainable buildings. Fire sprinklers play a vital role in extending the life cycle of structures, along with greatly reducing fire deaths and injuries.

I believe that fire sprinklers also contribute to "community" sustainability, and that "Green" supporters must include community sustainability as a big part of their cause. Fire sprinklers improve community sustainability because they can lower the cost of public fire protection. The less money needed for public fire protection, the more money available for making communities more viable.

The other elements of fire prevention - namely code enforcement and fire safety education - also help make communities sustainable. Effective codes, when coupled with quality plan review and inspections, can be a huge factor in reducing property loss, life loss and firefighter deaths and injuries. The same applies to fire safety education programs designed to address increased fire risks. Aging populations and ethnic cooking practices are just two of such risk categories where targeted fire safety education can play a key role to improve community sustainability.

Manual fire suppression will always be necessary. But when compared to built-in suppression and fire prevention, it is expensive and has definite limits in improving sustainability. Focusing on manual suppression at the expense of prevention can actually harm sustainability.

I think that my motto for advocating built-in fire suppression and fire prevention as part of the Green movement says it all. The goal of the Green movement should be "Safe buildings in sustainable environments."

A better way to justify FD staffing

The continuing trend of firefighter layoffs reveals more than the dire economic straits of cities and towns. It also shows a giant disconnect between policy makers and fire chiefs over what constitutes adequate fire protection.

The issue is by no means new. It is just that the economic downturn which began in 2008 has brought it front and center. Fire chiefs in general have never been able to make a good case for staffing and equipment levels. I have written and spoken about the need for a credible method of measuring fire department outputs and outcomes, but have seen little progress toward achieving that goal.

That is why a recent telephone conference call buoyed my spirits and told me that we are making progress. The participants were fire service leaders working on valid ways to measure fire department output and results, along with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) experts who are helping them construct the measuring tools.

The purpose of the call was to discuss a scale of structural fire risk exposure where the level of risk is defined by the number of firefighters needed on the initial response to a report of a working fire. It is based on what I call a "boots on the ground" approach to justifying fire department staffing levels, and it asks the following question. "For any particular type of structure, how many firefighters are required to perform the critical fireground tasks needed to handle an incident in that type of occupancy? A critical task is a task that must be performed simultaneously, or in close coordination, with other tasks and with a reasonable level of safety to the firefighters performing those tasks. Fire attack, ventilation and water supply are three such tasks. My post titled "How many firefighters does it take to stop a fire" discusses the concept of critical fireground task, so I won't go into it here.

There are two points to this. The first is that basing staffing levels on the number of critical fireground tasks needed for different structural fire risks is a valid way to justify staffing and equipment. The other point is that the number of firefighters needed must arrive at a fire scene in short order, and that dictates their locations throughout a jurisdiction.

The group on the conference call is working on such a scale. They will consider a pilot study to assign a risk level to every structure in a jurisdiction and then map the distance of each structure from the required number of firefighters.

With that data in hand, fire chiefs could see how well – or poorly – their manual suppression forces are staffed and equipped to handle the range of structural fire risks to which they are exposed. The knowledge will help them to prioritize those resources. Also, the data can point to priorities for using alternate methods of mitigating certain risks, like built-in suppression, inspection priorities and targeted public education. And of course, fire chiefs will be better equipped to describe their community's fire risk to policy makers in more meaningful terms.

Let’s compare apples to apples

Back in the day, I participated in the development of what became the Commission on Fire Accreditation International. Among the many issues discussed was the feasibility of ranking fire departments. I sided with the proponents, but those in opposition prevailed. They argued that fire chiefs would see being a "Class C" fire department instead of an A or even B as some sort of putdown.

Looking back on it, such an evaluation would have been daunting, so it was probably good that we did not implement the idea. Today, however, we have better tools to do such comparisons, and I think that it is time to create a uniform method for ranking fire departments.

Specifically, I am talking about ranking fire departments based upon their fire risk exposure. I envision jurisdictions using a risk exposure scale to tally their structural fire risks and the demands they place on firefighters and equipment. Fire departments with relatively high risk exposures would be ranked above those with relatively little.

GIS mapping can make the evaluation relatively easy, and I'll be talking with some GSI folks about this when I attend Fire Rescue International in Dallas later this month. The ability to graphically depict various risk exposures and their locations would be a valuable tool for fire chiefs during budget sessions as well as ranking them with similar fire departments. Incidentally, if you are attending FRI and want to say Hi, I'll be staffing the International Code Council booth.

Supporters of RHAVE might say that the tool already accomplishes what I am suggesting. I see RHAVE as doing a lot of things instead of having a single purpose. In other words, RHAVE is a multipurpose tool, and I think that a tool designed specifically for the job will work better.

Here is why I see the value in ranking fire departments. Going back to a baseball analogy that I used in an earlier post, scoring fire department effectiveness is like giving baseball players effectiveness scores. Pitchers' ERA's are valuable when comparing pitchers. Batting averages help us compare hitters. However, such data is only useful when comparing teams that play at the same level. For example, the ERA's of pitchers on National and American League teams aren't very helpful tools for comparing them with pitchers on farm teams. That is because the big league pitchers face higher quality batters than their farm team counterparts, so comparing them is like comparing apples to oranges.

Perhaps the day will come when the US has a uniform, "apples-to-apples," method of ranking fire departments by the degree of structural fire risk they handle.

 

T minus ten and counting

We have all heard those words announced when the ten-second countdown begins to a rocket launch. The words came to mind recently when I looked at a curve titled "Time v. products of combustion" on the USFA web site (www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pdf/coffee-break/time-vs-products-of-combustion.pdf).

The number 10 shows up prominently on the USFA curve, but it is not a countdown. Rather, it is the average number of minutes before fire units arrive at fire scenes and begin suppression. The curve also shows the short time to residential sprinkler activation. Not only do they intervene long before firefighters can get there, they act before conditions in the room of origin can become untenable to life.

The curve shows other data, including the average time to flashover. According to a report from the National Institute of Tests and Standards (NIST), that point has dropped from 17 minutes to three. Flashover is significant because conditions in a home quickly deteriorate when flashover occurs. However, conditions in the room of origin become untenable to life halfway to flashover. What that means is that anyone in the room of origin has about a minute and a half to get out before there is too little oxygen or it is too hot to take a breath.

Residential sprinklers usually operate in less than a minute, which is why they are such effective life safety devices. Even the fastest, most heavily staffed, fire department cannot get to a fire in time to save lives in that amount of time. That is why I tell fire chiefs, "Adding more stations and firefighters will not affect your record of life loss. If you want to do that, get sprinklers installed."

 

It’s time for USFA leadership once again

Fire departments of all shapes and sizes are facing serious, crippling staffing problems. One cannot go a day without hearing more news reports of layoffs, closed stations and too few volunteers.

For whatever reasons, fire departments continue to try to resolve their problems with staffing models that have not changed since the 19^th century. Career firefighters insist that more funding for firefighters is the only answer. Volunteer departments keep looking for creative ways to find more volunteers.

I believe that viable solutions exist; ones that can apply to career, combination and volunteer fire departments, ones that are less costly yet will increase safety to the public and firefighters. What seems to be missing is leadership that can look past traditional staffing models and seek 21^st century solutions.

Since its creation, the USFA has played key leadership roles in addressing public safety and firefighter safety problems. I saw it in the 1970's when the USFA took the lead in the development of residential sprinklers. When the change in home furnishings doubled the heat of dwelling fires, made them burn twice as fast and developed magnitudes more smoke, the USFA took the lead in improving turnout gear. These are just two of the many times that the USFA has led the way in finding cost-effective solutions to fire safety problems.

Today, fire department staffing is a critical fire safety issue, a problem that begs for national leadership. I think that it is time for the USFA to take the lead, as it has done in the past, to help jurisdictions resolve the staffing problems that are becoming a public safety plague.

To do this, the USFA should fund a new national public service program that applies specifically to the fire service. I suggest that they call it the US Fire Corps. The program would recruit qualified college-age volunteers to serve four-year terms as firefighters for free college educations in return.

The USFA's role would be to fund and oversee create pilot programs in different parts of the US that apply to a range of fire departments, from large career to small volunteer. The USFA would evaluate their progress and adapt to local conditions in order to ensure their long-term effectiveness. The initiative requires a multi-year commitment on the USFA's part. If the pilot programs meet their goals of providing more firefighters at significantly less cost, the USFA would then develop support services for jurisdictions that decide to create their own public service programs.

The Fire Corps model is similar to what the US military offers recruits, and their college incentive programs seem to work. A US Fire Corps should be an attractive alternative to the military route for performing a public service in order to get a college education. I recently wrote about some fire departments that are successfully using college student firefighters to bolster their ranks. My post on staffing appears elsewhere on this Blog, so I won't go into detail here. Suffice it to say that cost-effective methods currently exist that will sustain or increase staffing for significantly less cost. The USFA needs to take the lead once again in resolving our current fire safety crisis.

The problem with traditional performance measures

In past writings, I have used a baseball anecdote to help point out the drawbacks of traditional fire department performance measures, and I think that it bears repeating here.

The New York Yankees played the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960 World Series. The Series went to seven games, with the Yankees amassing 55 runs v. 27 for the Pirates. If we used aggregated data like total runs to determine the winner, it would be clear that the Yankees won the Series. They didn't.

The Pirates won the Series because they won more games (4-3). Here is the game-by-game breakdown:

                               Pittsburgh Yankees

Game One                     6            4

Game Two                     3          16

Game Three                  0          10

Game Four                    3            2

Game Five                    5            2

Game Six                     0           12

Game Seven               10             9

Total Runs                  27           55

The records show that the Yankees earned most of their runs in three blowouts in games Two, Three and Six. However, the Pirates won four of the seven games and took the championship.

The statistic of Total Runs for the Series tells us nothing about why each game turned the way it did. For that, we have to look at the outcome of each game. We can also evaluate each game to determine why the score turned out the way it did. Taking Game Two as an example, what factors allowed the Yankees to score 16 runs and hold the Pirates to three? Was the Pirates loss a factor of poor pitching, fielding or a combination of both? What did the Pirates have to change in order to win against the Yankees?

Total runs in baseball are similar to statistics like annual fire loss. They give us general information but do not tell us how responders faired at each incident. Without knowing whether a fire incident ended up as a "Win" or "Loss," we cannot figure out the most effective way to improve our performance. The role of the pitcher in baseball is similar to the role of fire prevention in public fire protection. Just as strong pitching reduces the number of hits, strong fire prevention reduces the number of fires that kill, injure and damage property.

Carrying the metaphor a little farther, manual suppression is similar to fielding. It is reactive instead of proactive and has its limits. If a batter overcomes a pitch and hits one out of the park, the best fielders in the world are helpless. Just as it takes a team of skilled individuals to win more baseball games than their rivals, it takes a team of skilled individuals to improve a fire department's record of Wins v. Losses. Fire chiefs who continue to rely upon aggregated data and ignore the outcomes of individual fire incidents cannot find the most cost effective ways to improve their department's performance.

How fire risk and mitigation are related

Fire chiefs who want to achieve excellence must understand that public fire protection consists of much more than firefighters, apparatus and water supplies. They must also appreciate the value of the other elements of fire protection that mitigate fire risk.

I describe fire risk as the product of three probabilities. The equation for fire risk,

R, is:

R = (P₁) (P₂) (P₃)

 where:

   P1 = the probability of a fire starting

   P2 = the probability of a fire spreading

   P3 = the probability of a fire doing harm to property and people

The three elements of overall fire risk have three primary mitigation methods. Public education is the primary means of reducing P₁. Code enforcement also helps reduce P₁ but is not the primary means, and manual suppression plays no role at all.

Code enforcement, which includes effective building and fire codes, requirements for built-in suppression, knowledgeable plan reviewers and inspectors, is the primary means of reducing P₂. Public education also plays a role, followed by manual suppression. Suppression is the primary means of reducing P₃, but code enforcement and public education also play roles.

The fire risk equation and the related mitigation methods make it clear that fire chiefs who rely upon manual suppression cannot effectively control their fire risks. Fire chiefs who invest in quality public education and code enforcement can.

Excellent compared to what?

In my post titled "What is excellence in fire protection?" I mentioned the need for valid measures to gauge fire department performance. I suggested two measures in a later post.

At present, very few fire departments are evaluating the results of their public fire protection systems. However, those few show that some fire chiefs understand the need to catch up to other public services on this issue.

But even if a large number of fire departments switched to results-based evaluation, the following question remains. How do we compare apples to apples? Fire Department A may have a lower effectiveness score than Fire Department B, but what if it jurisdiction has higher risks than those in Fire Department B's locale? Moving to results-based management is important, but it is only the first step in comparing fire department effectiveness.

In 2001, my friend Ronny Coleman helped develop a method for measuring what I call a community's fire risk exposure. The program is called RHAVE, an acronym for "Risk, Hazard and Value Evaluation." Fire departments can employ RHAVE to assess the risk level of each structure using a variety of measures such as the potential demand on firefighters and equipment, the number and type of occupants, etc. The results are assigned to a matrix of frequency and consequences.

RHAVE's goal is to give fire chiefs data which they can use to describe their community fire risk and justify budget levels. I do not know how many fire departments are using RHAVE, but I would prefer a more straight forward method that does not depend upon personal judgment.

Part of RHAVE's risk analysis places structures in one of the following categories: maximum, high, routine and remote. It is similar to a set of categories that I have previously developed. Whatever the number of categories, we need a universally accepted way to describe risk. Once we do, we can than categorize fire departments based upon their overall degree of risk exposure. The information will let us interpret fire department effectiveness scores in light of their risk exposure scores. Then we will be comparing apples to apples.