rescue blog
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Data from the first 2,000 recorded rescues (you read that right) has been collected, calculated, and collated for all you nerds. Data Drop....Was Victim Behind a Closed Door v Survival Rate. Four primary factors impact the survivability of a given space inside a building on fire: the physical proximity to the fire (distance), the elevation in the space (dose), whether or not there is a closed door separating the fire from the given space (dose), and how long an area is exposed to fire (duration). UL Firefighter Safety Research Institute has long understood the importance of closed doors as life safety tools, and this objective fact has been demonstrated in dozens of full-scale fire experiments over the past ten-plus years. Now we have the experiential data to strengthen the already empirically proven claim. Data collected thus far shows that the survival rate of recorded rescues where victims were located behind a closed door is 86%, while the survival rate of recorded rescues where victims were not behind a closed door is only 62%...that’s a difference of almost 25%. Like in all things, the more we learn about something, the more questions arise. Does your department push the Close Before You Doze message during your public education campaign? Who do we preach this message to more than just the elementary aged kiddos? What about the elderly, parents, teachers, college students, etc., etc.? Do we train our members on how to present our public education messages, or do we just have the least senior member present? Like UL FSRI has been preaching, a closed door is not the only tool that we can give our citizens to help themselves in case of a fire. The three life safety pillars are: working smoke alarms, evacuation plans, and closed doors. 
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Data from the first 2,000 recorded rescues (you read that right) has been collected, calculated, and collated for all you nerds. Data Drop ....Victim Reports v Total Recorded Rescues. The graph below shows us that in 69% of all recorded rescues to date there were positive victim reports. Or if you look at this slightly differently, that in 31% of all recorded rescues to date there were no positive victim reports, meaning either there were no reports at all (n = 562), or reports that everyone was out (n = 61). Also, diving a bit deeper into the data, we can see that in 26% (16/61) of recorded rescues the report of 'everyone is out' was given by a resident of the fire building. The more we learn about decision-making under stress, the more we realize that there are serious valleys in our abilities when we’re (civilians and firefighters alike) under duress. This can explain why when someone’s world is burning in front of them (and they are potentially severely injured), they make relatively simple mistakes. Like in all things, the more we learn about something, the more questions arise.
 Data from the first 2,000 recorded rescues (you read that right) has been collected, calculated, and collated for all you nerds. Data Drop......Total Rescue Time v Survival Rate. Total Rescue Time = Search Time + Removal Time = time from FD arrival on scene until victim removed from the fire building The graph below shows us that time and survival are inversely related. Meaning that as time increases, recorded survival rate decreases. This is intuitive to all of us (and to those not in the fire service) and is the reason that we have lights and sirens, Opticoms, stage our bunkers, train as hard as we do, etc. While we already had this tacit knowledge, we now have experiential data to fortify our intuition. Remember, this is their time, not ours. Like in all things, the more we learn about something, the more questions arise.
 Data from the first 2,000 recorded rescues (you read that right) has been collected, calculated, and collated for all you nerds. Data Drop ...Time of Day v Total Recorded Rescues. As you can see, the three biggest slices of the pie below are from 00:00 - 02:59, 03:00 - 05:59, and 21:00 - 23:59, respectively. Over 50% of all of our recorded rescues have happened between 21:00 and 06:00. This begs a couple questions:
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