NFPA Journal - Fall 2022 - 40

Research by Birgitte Messerschmidt
THE GLOBAL
VIEW ON FIRE
RESEARCH
The Poverty Factor
ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED PEOPLE FACE A DISPROPORTIONATE SHARE OF
FIRE RISK IN THE U.S. BUT THERE ARE WAYS WE CAN ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM.
T
he number of fires and
fire deaths in the United
States has been cut in half
since 1980, and it's easy to
think that we've almost
solved the problem of fires in buildings.
While we've made progress, a series of
fires in January offer a stark reminder
that we still have work to do, especially
when the risk is faced by people who are
economically disadvantaged.
On January 5, a fire in an apartment
in Philadelphia killed 12 people, including
nine children. Four days later, a fire
in an apartment building in New York
City killed 17 people, including eight children.
On January 13, a firefighter died
responding to a fire in a vacant building
in St. Louis, and three firefighters were
killed in a blaze in a vacant building in
Baltimore on January 24. Each of these
fires was rooted in socioeconomic challenges
where fire safety takes a back seat
to more immediate needs: shelter in a
vacant building for a homeless person,
for example, or a large extended family crowding into an apartment
to ensure everyone has a place to sleep.
Many studies have described the connection between poverty
To ensure that the
benefits of safety
regulations extend
to all, we need to
prioritize policies that
enable fire safety
rather than disable it.
faced by vulnerably sheltered persons is
a product of the probability of a credible
fire event occurring and the measure
of the possibility of death or injury to
an occupant resulting from that event.
The approach allows for an in-depth
evaluation of attributes of the building
or shelter that can lead to potentially
dangerous fires, as well as the attributes
of the population that may make it more
vulnerable to fire. Understanding that
combination means we can potentially
address these issues more effectively.
The best way to improve fire safety
in the built environment is the implementation
of fire safety technologies
through mandated codes and standards.
Unfortunately, many people living in
un- or under-regulated buildings and
shelters do not enjoy the benefits of that
technology-fire safety in these buildings
appears to consist primarily of
public education efforts and fire service
response. To complicate matters, research
indicates that it can be easy to inadverand
elevated fire risk in the US, as well as associated factors
including overcrowding, older housing, the proportion of
vacant houses in a community, and residents' proficiency with
English-all of which were highlighted by the January fires.
But most of those studies focus primarily on general fire risk
and contain little information on sociodemographic factors
and their relationship to dwelling characteristics. That's why
NFPA's Research Division recently teamed up with Kindling, a
nonprofit focused on fire safety inequalities, with the goal of
better understanding the scope of the problem and untangling
the more complex interactions between human vulnerability,
fire risk, and the building/shelter in which people live.
The resulting report, " The Invisible US Fire Problem " (nfpa.
org/invisible), suggests that the understanding of fire risk
40 | NFPA JOURNAL * FALL 2022
tently set up barriers to improving fire safety in unregulated
contexts, such as jurisdictions that prevent trash collection for
buildings whose use is not legally recognized. To ensure the
benefits of such regulation extend to all, we need to prioritize
policies that enable fire safety rather than disable it, regardless
of the circumstances people find themselves in.
Our fire problem will not be solved as long as people who
are homeless or living in vulnerable building/shelter situations
suffer disproportionally from fire. It is considered an " invisible "
problem, despite impacting numerous communities and
threatening vast numbers of people. Research gaps have been
identified, and an outline of needed research has been drafted.
But research alone is not enough to solve it. Ensuring fire safety
for all will also require the enactment of policy and a willingness
to act to address these emerging problems.
Birgitte Messerschmidt is director of the Applied Research Group at NFPA.
MICHAEL HOEWELER
NFPA Journal - Fall 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - Fall 2022
