As we found out in Chapter 11, there are a number of ways to evaluate and track the prevention efforts of a fire department.  For the Week 6 Forum:

• choose a fire department and report on how they currently evaluate their fire prevention efforts.
• in your opinion, is the department effectively tracking and evaluating their prevention efforts?
• could this fire department use different techniques of evaluating their prevention efforts in order to improve the effectiveness of the services they offer to the community?  If so, describe how you think they could improve?

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#1

For this week’s forum post we are asked to choose a fire department and report on how they currently evaluate their fire prevention efforts. The fire department I chose is the Orlando Fire Department. There is a total of 17 Fire houses to cover all areas of the city to ensure they get there within a timely manner. The team has a good way of effectively tracking and evaluating their prevention effort. Some of these included labels the building as a type of risk. Some of these are targets and others special hazards. This allows for them to know what water flow to use and know the risk enhancements.” In order to improve the Community Risk Assessment, changes are made within the Agency’s RMS, to include a Risk Assessment tab within the RMS Occupancy Module. This entry into the RMS permits real-time, up-to-date tracking and reporting of the Community Risk Assessment, as well as the ability to query specific risk assessment information as information is added or updated within the Occupancy Module of the RMS. “(2018)

The Orlando Fire Department is doing a good job and for such a larger city has a good way of tracking and evaluating their preventions efforts because they are making sure they know what they are going against. All building is put into groups that say what it’s made of, stories, and risks that the building have. They have logged time there arrive at the scene and make entrance. This is for units, engine, tower, and rescue even the chiefs time.  It has the time of the call, how long it took too drive and how long in total. They want to know everything that is happening so that all mistake is fixed. They want to know how to get to call quicker or fight it better next time. This department has a all areas cover which explains why they have a” mission to to protect the lives and property of Orlando Citizens. We are proud to lead the only fire department in the state to have ISO 1 classification, International Fire Accreditation, Emergency Management Accreditation Program certification and ACE accreditation.” (2019) They live up to these standards.

Community Risk Assessment & Standards of Cover. (2018). City of Orlando.

“Orlando Fire Department.” City of Orlando, City of Orlando, 2019, https://www.orlando.gov/Our-Government/Departments-Offices/Orlando-Fire-Department.

#2

The Fire department that I choose is the Whiteman Fire Department on Whiteman AFB.  For an evaluation of their efforts the fire department uses a programed call Automated Civil Engineer System-Fire Department. This program is used to record and track all responses the fire department goes on as well as the cause or possible cause of the call.  They then use this information gathers to curtail the next years audience. After taking the years information to curve the habits then the years’ worth of training the numbers are compared to show whether the new prevention outreach it working or not.  

In my opinion I do believe this is the best way to run the prevention program. The staple leading causes of fires are always taught with prevention techniques and then the local specific high areas are taught as well as briefed and ways to prevent these fires.  As the trends change with time so does the training objectives and how to combat the underlying issue.

As for a different system, I’m sure there are some out there that make the information more presentable from the get go however the system in use does everything that we need such as show positive and negative trending.  Furthermore, in my case it is the standard system that all Air Force bases must use since it also loads all the data up to a central area for the Air force to also track positive and negative trends. This information is also used to see what is happening around the world so that areas not affected by some trends can get ahead of the game and educate before it becomes an issue.