Principles of Fire Behavior - Essay Example

But Robert C. Barr, & John Eversole are of a different opinion that: "the lines separating urban and rural fire/rescue departments are increasingly blurred by the combined effects of the suburbanization of America" (Barr & Eversole, 2003, p. 580) modernization/suburbanization in America was so helpful to reduce the difference between urban and rural fire rescue departments and it reflected in the capability to handle critical situations.

Due to the absence of higher-level safety performance, US firefighters face deaths and injuries from higher-level fire risks. When considering other high-risk occupations it can be seen that there is a higher level of performance for overcoming higher-level fire risk and thus the death rate among the firefighters is lower. When comparing the firefighter's death in the USA in between the period of 1995 to 2004 it can be seen that there are seven firefighter deaths per 10000 fires and at the same time in the UK and New Zealand, the firefighter death is only less than once per 10000 fires.

The cases of civilian deaths relating to fire accidents in between the period 2000 to 2002 were 1.32 per 100,000 populations. In the case of the UK and New Zealand, it is 1.05 and 0.95 per 10000 populations respectively. In the USA the direct fire loss and costs from high fire events in between the period 2000- 2002 were 0.022%. In the case of New Zealand and the UK, it was only 0.017% and 0.014% of GDP respectively. In that period the cost incurred for fire safety services was 0.025% of the US GDP. In the case of the UK and New Zealand, the expenditures were only 0.020 and 0.016 percent respectively of GDP.

This statistical comparison reveals that the cost of fire service organizations per GDP in the USA is more than that of most other industrialized nations. Whereas the performance level of US fire safety organizations is lower and this is the main cause of increasing fire deaths and direct fire loss than in other industrialized nations. To conclude, the lower performance level of the fire safety service organizations in the USA is the major cause of increasing high fire losses both in terms of civilian deaths and direct property loss when compared to other industrialized nations.