The report shows that while overall emergency calls continue to rise, fire calls have decreased. It concludes that only about seven percent of fire department responses in 2003 were to actual fires rather than false alarms, medical calls or other calls.
"Everyone realizes that for a variety of reasons, the amount of working fires is down," said National Volunteer Fire Council spokesman Craig Sharman. He said this is due in part to the efforts of the fire service, from community education to pushing for stronger building codes and standards.
"People that are involved in the fire service know that their mission extends well beyond fires, and this report confirms that," he said. "I think the fire service needs to let the public know that their responsibilities extend well beyond fire."
The International Association of Fire Fighters disputed the accuracy of the NFPA's statistic that only seven percent of calls in 2003 were to actual fires.
IAFF spokesman Jeff Zack argued that the study is not representative of the entire U.S.
"In fact, the respondents only cover 35 percent of the total U.S. population," he said. "Under five percent of all the respondents were from jurisdictions with populations greater than 100,000 and most of the responses from jurisdictions greater than 100,000 came from the South and the West," he said.
"That leaves out the Northeast which has a high population density and a generally greater occurrence of of fire."
However, Zack said the report is accurate in concluding that overall calls are up and that the fire service now responds to a greater variety of emergencies including not only medical calls but bomb scares, hazardous materials calls, mutual aid calls, search and rescue, and now the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction calls.
"What I got out of this report is that resources are taxed more than ever and that fire departments are now all-hazard departments. They respond to all kinds of emergencies and the resources are strained, and they need more," Zack said.
"All those different kinds of calls have created a different kind of need in the fire service, and it requires more training, more equipment and more firefighters."
NFPA head of statistics Dr. John Hall said the study does represent jurisdictions of all population sizes and all regions of the country.
He said it is expected that the percentage of fire calls will vary in specific communities.
"It's seven percent overall," he said. "The percent may very well vary by the size of the community, but we didn't break out results by size of community for that particular question. We have done it for other questions, and we would expect it to vary," he said.
"But the results are good. They're what you get when you put all the sizes of communities together. I think what you're hearing are from people who don't know how sample surveys work."
The chief of one of the largest combination fire departments in the country found the NFPA's statistics consistent with his experience.
Chief Thomas W. Carr Jr. of Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service in Maryland said that if anything, he expected the average percentage of fire calls compared to other calls to be lower than seven percent.
"I am not surprised by that number at all," he said. "In fact in the real world that may be a little high."
Carr said the MCFRS responded to a total of about 105,000 calls last year, of which 77 percent, or 80,000 calls, were EMS. He said only about one percent, or 1,050 calls, were to 'working fires,' where firefighters rolled up to find fire in a structure that required them to put water on it.
"I do agree that the mission of the fire service has and is continuing to change, and be more focused on all-hazards," the chief said.
"Also, I belive that at least here in Montgomery County, our focus needs to be on preventing 911 calls," he said. "We have a division called Community Risk Reduction Services which is focused on making the community safer, not only from a fire hazard perspective but from all things -- injury prevention, education -- those types of things that help prevent catastrophic events from happening."
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