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Fire and emergency-service personnel at Navy shore commands are adjusting
well to the National Fire Incident Reporting System. Adopted in 2001, this
technologically up-to-date program provides program managers, fire chiefs
and others a wealth of information to assist in managing the fire-service
mission.
NFIRS 5.0 is a tool for fire departments to report and maintain
computerized records of fires and other fire-department incidents in a
uniform manner. The United States Fire Administration (USFA) in
partnership with the National Fire Information Council (NFIC) developed
the system.
The latest version provides basic fire-incident response information and
additional report modules to meet the increasing diverse mission of fire
departments. The program collects data beyond fires to include a full
range of fire department activity on a Navy-wide scale. Included is an
expanded utility for users of the system at both the program-manager and
fire-department level. The program includes an Emergency Medical Services
(EMS) module, along with modules for department apparatus, wild land and
personnel.
NFIRS 5.0 will enable the Safety Center to examine trends by activity,
region and DOD level. The resulting information is used to help reduce the
needless loss of life and property by fire throughout the Navy and Marine
Corps.
System Features
- Modular design. Data is collected for all incident types in a basic
module. Additional modules for fires, structure fires, firefighter
casualties, civilian casualties, EMS, hazardous materials, wild-land
fires, apparatus and personnel. The apparatus, personnel, EMS, hazmat
and wild-land fire modules are optional.
- The address is now formatted to allow computerized queries and
street based address matching for GIS purposes.
- Carbon-monoxide incidents are now captured.
- Abbreviated paths through the system for nuisance fires with no
losses or casualties.
- Fire losses are now broken into property and contents to better
define structure losses. Pre-incident value is captured as an optional
data element.
- Able to capture one-time information for special studies.
- Small spills of common hazardous materials such as gasoline are easy
to document. Detailed information is required only after a serious
release of hazardous materials.
- Fire-service resources for apparatus and personnel are now grouped
by use at the incident. Specific, detailed information about the use
of fire service personnel and apparatus will be collected in a
standard way for the first time in optional modules. This will permit
manning studies on several levels of use.
- Specific property information about multiple on-site materials and
their use is captured. This will allow identification of non-intended
or illegal uses of property such as residential drug houses or
laboratories.
- Information on the number of acres burned for all fires is captured.
Specific and detailed information about wild-land or large open fires
is captured for those fires only.
- Multiple factors contributing to the cause of the fire are captured
for the first time. This allows identification of juvenile fire
setters, possible gang involvement in fires, alcohol and cigarette
interaction as well as drugs and youth involvement by age categories.
- Information on equipment involved in starting fires has been greatly
expanded. Detailed tracking of specific equipment involved in fire
ignitions is possible.
- Factors that pertain to fire suppression and prevention are captured
(for example, burglar bars, high rack storage, balloon construction
and unprotected vertical openings).
- Detailed information on the impact of fires on buildings will be
captured. Information on the building's size, number of stories and
status are now available. Specific information on fire origin, damage
patterns, flame spread and materials contributing to flame spread are
captured as well.
- Information on detectors and automatic suppression systems has been
greatly expanded. Included are information on the system's presence,
range, power supply, effectiveness, operation and reason for failure.
- Information on casualties has been expanded to provide a better
understanding of the relationship of the casualty to factors
contributing to injury as well as the nature and cause of injuries.
NFIRS is managed and maintained in the Shore Safety Directorate by
Vince Lisa, vincent.lisa@navy.mil
and Russ Miller, russell.w.miller@navy.mil
. If you need technical assistance, reports or data analysis, they are
ready to assist.
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