Reductions in Fire Prevention Efforts

For years we in the fire prevention field have been saying that when it comes to tight budgets, prevention is the first thing to be cut. Now there is evidence to support this finding. Mike Donahue, a retired Montgomery County, Md., deputy fire marshal, and Ray O’Brocki, a retired Baltimore City fire marshal, recently collaborated with others in our field to conduct a national survey of recent cuts to prevention programs across the nation’s fire service. It is not a scientific study, but still provides some great insight.

Though not too surprising, their findings have revealed some interesting aspects of where and how cuts are being made.

Survey Response

Donahue and O’Brocki collected more than 1,100 responses from practitioners across the nation representing a diverse array of department types (paid, volunteer and combination) and populations served. A very important aspect of this survey is that it focused on specific cuts to different types of prevention efforts; I refer to them as the four food groups: 1) plan review, 2) code compliance, 3) investigation, and 4) public education. The survey attempted to examine what happens in terms of outright cuts (percentage of each food group eliminated) vs. farming out the function to another service provider.

Slightly more than 50% of those who answered the specific question on cuts indicated that some level of cuts had been made, nearly all indicating they were made as a result of budget reductions. That result is actually better than I would have expected, given the dire economic straights we have been collectively facing. But from there, the evidence points to our continuing problems supporting prevention programs.

Of those who answered these questions, about 15% of the respondents indicated their department as a whole had cuts greater than 15%. However, about 50% of respondents indicated that their prevention programs had been cut by more than 15%. There were some anecdotal examples provided that indicated that some prevention programs had been cut entirely, though the numbers representing this level of severity was small. In all, five departments reported losing 100% of their prevention funding, six reported losing more than 75%, and thirteen reported losing more than 50%.

For those who answered these particular questions, 29% of respondents reported losses to their investigation budgets, 34% reported losses to their plan review budgets, 61% reported losses to their code compliance budgets and 75% reported losses to their public education budgets.

The depth and distribution of these cuts will be published in future reports.

Drawing Conclusions

There is more to the survey than I can describe here, but we can begin to draw some conclusions based on the information I’ve included. First, fire departments are indeed cutting prevention budgets more deeply than their operational budgets. Second, public education suffers the greatest cuts of any of the prevention programs, followed by code compliance inspections. Plan review and fire investigations suffer the smallest cuts.

Surprised? Me neither. I’m not naà¯ve about fiscal realities. People will picket to keep a station open, but they rarely if ever show up to complain about cuts to prevention programs. And those programs that do not produce revenue (e.g., public education) or are not required by law (like investigations often are) will be cut first. I don’t envision an angry business person demanding that elected officials reinstate code-compliance inspectors who will show up, identify hazards, order them corrected and cost the local business person precious money.

But this work is just phase one of the research Donahue and O’Brocki envision for the future. What we need now are examples of the impacts of these cuts. We keep saying that reductions in prevention will mean more fires, injuries and deaths in the long term, and now is our opportunity to demonstrate that. Providing concrete information about the impact of prevention is part of a larger effort to advocate for the value of prevention programs and prevent drastic cuts in the future.

Defending Prevention

If you’re looking for tools to help you defend your programs, they can be found at the Vision 20/20 website (www.strategicfire.org). The advocacy tools have been updated with a new tutorial through funds from the Assistance to Firefighters Grants program.

It is important to note that Mike and Ray conducted this research as volunteers and received only minimal financial support for the logistics of the survey. That is evidence of the continuing resilience and creativity of those in prevention, and of their dedication to the cause of improving our collective efforts. And the others who helped them on the task group (Steve Peavey, Angie Sweeney and Justin Smith) are of the same caliber.

If we keep at this, we can make sure that the next level of research is done–albeit slowly–and ultimately provide more solid evidence to support the need for, and the value of, prevention programs.

Note: Send data or anecdotal examples of the negative impacts of cuts to prevention to Mike Donahue at michaeld39@comcast.net, Ray O’Brocki at RObrocki@rockvillemd.gov, or Peg Carson at peg@carson-associates.com.