In January, the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) released provisional statistics on 2010 line of duty deaths (LODDs) in the fire service. The good news: The number of on-duty deaths is the lowest ever since the USFA began tracking fatalities in 1977. The bad news: Many of these deaths were clearly preventable–meaning that firefighters are still dying needlessly on the job.
Lower Numbers, Higher Awareness
According to the USFA data, 85 firefighters died on scene in 2010. That’s a 6% decrease from the previous year. (Note that this is provisional data; the USFA expects to release final statistics on 2010 LODDs in July.)
Fire organizations with a safety mission are examining the provisional data carefully. “Both 2009 and 2010 had a significant reduction to the number of line-of-duty deaths reported,” says Chief Ron Siarnicki, executive director of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF). “I truly believe that this is the beginning of a cultural change that the fire service as a whole has been generating–to work smarter, and work safer.”
What are the reasons behind this positive trend? “I can attribute the lower numbers to the Internet,” says William Goldfeder, deputy chief of the Loveland-Symmes (Ohio) Fire Department, and a contributing editor for FireRescue magazine. “It’s through the Internet that the IAFF, NVFC, NFFF and other organizations have been able to get their information out better than through individual fire departments. Lessons learned, close calls, safety training–all of this can be found online.” Goldfeder adds, “That said, it takes the local fire department to do something with that information.”
Siarnicki agrees that more departments are getting the message. He says, “Everyone Goes Home started in 2004, and I think it is a part of the catalyst that got this change going. Of course, other groups have messages too; it’s a system-wide approach to safety.” Rich Marinucci is program director of the NFFF’s Everyone Goes Home program. He notes, “There are a lot of different agencies that have safety programs; a lot of people are paying attention to this issue–and the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation tries to coordinate all these efforts to make sure we’re not duplicating messages.”
Marinucci knows his program is working because he gets direct feedback from firefighters who have made changes. “We hear back from some of our participants sometimes who acted on what they learned: ‘I went to my doctor and he said my cholesterol was too high, so now I’m on medication and trying to lose weight …’ or ‘I remembered what you said, so I wear my seatbelt now and we were in a wreck …’ Those are really encouraging to us. We’ll never know if we really saved someone, but it does make a difference,” Marinucci says.
Room for Improvement
No one is resting on their laurels over the decrease in LODDs. Marinucci states, “I’m never satisfied. There are still some areas that appear to be preventable–I see [in the report] between seven and 11 firefighters who were not wearing seatbelts, for example. We should be able to eliminate those completely. I look at the easier things we can address.”
Another preventable area is the large percentage of health-related deaths, including 51 heart attacks and strokes. “The only way to prevent these is for firefighters to take responsibility for their health, and the first step is to go see your doctor and get checked out,” Marinucci says. Goldfeder adds, “As for health-related deaths, the big deal is losing weight, and that comes down to how we eat. Eat salad, exercise and get yourself checked. Your motivation to lose weight should be your family and being a firefighter.”
And finally, when discussing the seven deaths that occurred during firefighter training in 2010, Siarnicki stresses safety. “The training ground should be the safest place we practice our profession, because it’s a controlled environment,” he says. “It’s the place to have trial and error without any fatalities. Any deaths that occur during training are 100% preventable.”
Next Steps
Siarnicki says that the NFFF plans two courses of action in preventing LODDs this year: “The first is staying the course and continuing to push awareness of the causes of fatalities, and the culture of safety,” he explains. “And the next focal point has to be on the leadership within the fire community–the informal leadership as well as the formal leadership. We have to make safety acceptable to everyone, make everyone agree that safety is a critical part of what we do every day.”
Goldfeder wants to add a new component to firefighter safety: “The next thing is to look at the injuries. Strictly from a fiscal standpoint, on-the-job injuries can be very, very expensive–and that’s not to discount the emotional side of it. There are some folks looking at that. Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia is starting to look at on-duty injuries in the fire service.”
The safety awareness campaigns of the NFFF, the IAFC and so many others will continue. For example, the 2011 Safety, Health and Survival Week theme is Fire Ground Survival: Firefighter, Fire Officer & Command Preparedness. (See next story for more details.)
“There’s a lot of work ahead of us,” Siarnicki says. “Some of these deaths are just unpreventable events, but there are a lot that we can do something about.”
For more information on preventing LODDs, visit www.EveryoneGoesHome.com and www.fireheroes.org.
Tragic Trends
The USFA provisional data shows that firefighter fatalities in 2010 included:
- 51 from heart attacks and strokes (60%)
- 11 in vehicle crashes (12.9%)
- 8 in association with wildland fires (9.41%)
- 7 during training exercises (8.23%)
- 5 struck by vehicles (5.88%)
