Fire Casualties and their Relation to Fire Company Response Distance and Demographic Factors,

Abstract

Fatalities and injuries per structural fire in New York City have been compared by time of day, season, year, construction, region of the City, floor of origin, and occupancy. The relationship between response distance and fire casualties has also been studied. It has been found that the number of casualties per structural fire has not been increasing over time. There are, however, significant time-of-day and time-of-year effects on risk of life that should be taken into account in providing fire-protection services. Other casualty indices provided inconclusive results since certain categories, such as casualties occurring in tenements, could reflect social as well as building-construction problems. A statistically significant, but very small, relationship was found between response distance and fire casualties. The effect of response distance on casualty risk is so overwhelmed by other factors that risk of life cannot be used as the primary criterion in developing mathematical fire-resource allocation models. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1975
Accession Number
ADA032093

Entities

People

  • Anne Stevenson
  • Edward J. Ignall
  • Hope Corman
  • Kenneth L. Rider

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Casualties
  • Coefficients
  • Construction
  • Demography
  • Fatalities
  • Fire Hazards
  • Fire Protection
  • Hazards
  • Housing (Dwellings)
  • New Jersey
  • New York
  • Risk
  • Standards
  • Statistics
  • Travel Time
  • Warning Systems

Readers

  • Fire Suppression Systems Design.
  • Organizational Psychology.
  • Trauma or Military Medicine