Do you know how many firefighters it would take to safely, effectively, and efficiently extinguish a fire in your home?  Another one of those things that most people never think about until they need it…but that’s why we’re having this conversation, isn’t it?

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) says that 80 percent of fires in the USA each year occur in the home.  For my example I’ll use a single family dwelling for a family of four: a nice little two-story, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, with an attached two-car garage, house.  Probably around 1800 square feet of living space.

It’s 4:00 p.m. on a Tuesday and your teenaged son is cooking some french fries for him and his younger sister—you and your husband are still at work—when one of his friends starts texting him about a party the next evening.  He leaves the hot skillet with the oil and fries in it as he wanders around the house alternately talking and texting with the original friend and others who’ll be at the party.  Next thing he knows his sister is screaming, “There’s a fire in the kitchen!”, and a smoke detector starts sounding.  He gets himself and his sister out of the house and calls 9-1-1 and the fire department gets dispatched to the fire. 

For safety, efficiency and effectiveness, firefighting tasks are best accomplished by crews—two to five firefighters with a crew leader—working with the necessary resources, e.g., vehicles, water, hoses, saws, lights, etc.  Let’s see how many firefighters it will take to put this fire out and save your home and its contents from total destruction. 

 That’s the bare minimum.  That’s for just one room of the house having active fire.  That’s just for a house with nobody trapped needing rescue.  That’s just for fire extinguishment that would take less than a half hour of total work to accomplish.  Add a room on fire, add a crew.  Add a person needing rescue, add two crews.  Add a fire on the second floor, add two crews.

NFPA has established national standards for staffing levels for career and volunteer departments.  These standards do not carry the weight of law, but rather are consensus standards, i.e., they represent the consensus of the opinions of the many organizations involved in fire response in the United States.  Thus, NFPA standards do “carry” a considerable amount of influence within the fire service and local governments.

How many firefighters will show up at your home if you need them?