FIRE PREVENTION EFFECTIVENESS: CAN WE MEASURE WHAT DID NOT HAPPEN? EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT BY: J. Robert Ray, CFPS

In 1973, the President of the United States commissioned a study of America’s fire problem. The United States was suffering much greater losses in terms of fire deaths, injuries, and economic loss than other industrialized nations. The resulting report highlighted a need for the American fire service to place a greater emphasis on fire prevention. After the release of this report, the fire problem began to diminish. Fire prevention apparently had been making a positive impact on the nation’s fire problem, but no one could prove the correlation. Fire departments were not trained to evaluate the effectiveness of their fire prevention efforts. The fire service could not prove that increased efforts in fire prevention might result in further reductions in the fire problem because no conclusive data suggested that prevention caused the reductions in the first place. The lack of conclusive proof of prevention effectiveness has resulted in difficulty obtaining additional resources for fire prevention efforts in Anne Arundel County. This research project attempted to answer three questions. First, should the fire service be concerned with trying to measure the effectiveness of fire prevention? Second, are methods and criteria available that could be used to measure prevention efforts? Finally, are there methods and criteria that could be applied in Anne Arundel County EMS/ Fire/Rescue to measure the effectiveness of fire prevention? A literature review was conducted of current and historical literature. The research revealed a wealth of material on why the fire service should evaluate fire prevention programs. The evidence was inconclusive that methods exist to make such evaluations. However, the research did show a need for the American fire service to improve data collection and use. These improvements could lead to better evaluative tools.