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 or
their physical courage alone firefighters deserve a place in America's
pantheon of heroes. Although few Americans needed reminding, last
week's gripping television images of men rushing into the hellish
infernos of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11 brought home
the incredible workaday bravery firefighters must demonstrate. According
to the United States Fire Administration, firefighters fall victim
to two thirds of all fire-related injuries: Police officers, on
the other hand, suffer only about three percent of all crime-related
injuries.
Firefighters
have done their job so well they may become obsolete in the near
future. Modern buildings resist fires, technology useful against
fires has improved, and as a result, fire-related deaths, injuries,
and damages have entered a period of permanent decline.
Sprinkler systems,
a shift away from wooden construction, and affluence have eliminated
many common fire sources. Although only about two percent of buildings
have sprinkler systems, almost all new public facilities do and,
as a result, no American has died in a building with a sprinkler
system since 1986. Although wood still remains the single most common
material for individual houses, brick is rapidly catching up. Wooden
apartment buildings, the single most common type of housing as recently
as the 1930s, have nearly disappeared in many places. Affluence
has also helped reduce fires. Into the early 1980s, many homes used
wood stoves and electric space heaters that often caught fire. Today,
even the poor have central heating.
Better technology
and education have also helped protect Americans from fires. Mobile
phones allow citizens to report puffs of smoke as soon as they appear
while smoke detectors warn sleeping families to evacuate before
smoke and flames threatens lives. Cheaper and easier-to-maintain
helicopters, likewise, allow quicker responses to fires in distant
rural areas while computers have simplified and improved dispatch
for urban agencies. Fire-safety efforts in schools have played a
role in a near-50-percent reduction in the number of fires started
during children's play.
The results
are stunning. Fires in hotels and motels, which caused several hundred
deaths yearly in the 1960s, have become so rare that the government
no longer even tabulates them. In 2000, fire deaths sat at less
than a third their levels in the mid-1970s while injuries have declined
at nearly as fast a pace. Even though population has grown over
20 percent and the real gross domestic product has more than doubled,
damages as a result of fire have fallen nearly a third since systematic
record keeping began in the mid-1970s.
While it will
take hard work to maintain America's 40-percent reductions in crime
during the 1990s, the reductions in fire appear permanent. While
the nation might loose its will to lock up thugs or retreat from
effective community-policing programs, the modest improvements in
technology, education, and building codes which protect people from
fire appeal to all but the most ardent libertarians. The U.S. Fire
Administration claims repeatedly that America's fire problem is
still worse than other industrialized countries but the data upon
which this claim rests seem poor: the U.S. fire death rate of 14.9
per 1,000 is about the same as the Britain's and Japan's and, in
any case, the most recent compellation is a 1998 study which pulls
together data from the early 1990s.
Fire departments,
in short, need to start looking for a new mission. Already, most
urban departments require paramedic certification for all firefighters
and more have begun encouraging their firefighters to leave stations
in order to focus on community-safety efforts. Fire departments
have begun to spend more time on dealing with hazardous industrial
chemicals and have even branched out into offering classes on as
bicycle safety. The risk of terrorism and natural disasters alone
justifies keeping a significant on-call corps of rescuers on duty
and, while nagging the public about wearing bicycle helmets may
not be a good use of firefighters' time, answering urgent ambulance,
and cleaning up chemical spills remain proper government functions.
Some types of fires, such as forest fires, show little sign of becoming
less common. America will need a corps of brave and dedicated men
and women to rescue citizens from perilous situations but they may
not look much like today's firefighters.
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