Rethinking the Fire Department
Firemen have done their job so well they may become obsolete in the near future.

By Eli Lehrer, senior editor, The American Enterprise
March 19, 2002 10:00 a.m.

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.