Phenomena Within the National Fire Incident Reporting System: Practices of Resource Deployment and Safety Concerns from 1998-2014 in the American Fire and Emergency Services

Abstract

Humans usually thrive within the social ecological system (SES) until an emergent fire begins to consume structures in the built environment and in some cases become injured or deceased. The Bronfenbrenner (1979) social ecological system (SES) model is the foundation to create an emergent-social ecological system (E-SES) model comprised of four sub-systems. First, the macro-sub-system consists of the national incident management system (NIMS). Second, the meso-sub-system consists of fire department policies. Third, the exo-sub-system consists of the national fire incident reporting system (NFIRS. Fourth, the micro-sub-system consists of firefighters and civilians). Utilizing the quantitative methodology for the statistical analysis of nine hypotheses will determine if relationships exist amongst any variables. This thesis also discusses the concepts for reducing or eliminating additional unsafe conditions during operational fire incidents, which contribute to both firefighter and civilian casualties. The major finding from within this study is that the infrequent utilization of the incident command system (ICS) for either small or large emergent building fire incidents, this will in fact contribute to both firefighter and civilian casualties.