The Impact of Adequate Staffing

NFPA 1500 and 1710 both recommend that a minimum acceptable fire company staffing level should be four members responding on, or arriving with, each engine and ladder company responding to any type of fire.

A prime objective of fire service agencies is to maintain enough strategically located personnel and equipment so that the minimum effective firefighting force can reach a reasonable number of fire scenes before flashover occurs. Of utmost importance in limiting fire spread is the quick arrival of sufficient numbers of personnel and equipment to attack and extinguish the fire, as well as rescue any trapped occupants and care for the injured. Sub-optimal staffing of arriving units may delay such an attack, thus allowing the fire to progress to more dangerous conditions for firefighters and civilians. 

Staffing deficiencies on primary fire suppression apparatus negatively affect the ability of the fire department to safely and effectively mitigate emergencies and therefore correlate directly with higher risks and increased losses, both physically and economically. Continued fire growth beyond the time of firefighter on scene arrival is directly linked to the time it takes to initiate fire suppression operations. As indicated in the Table below, responding companies staffed with four firefighters are capable of initiating critical fireground operational tasks more efficiently than those with crew sizes below industry standards.

First-arriving companies staffed with four firefighters are more efficient in all aspects of initial fire suppression and search and rescue operations compared to two- or three-person companies. There is a significant increase in time for all the tasks if a company arrives on scene staffed with only three firefighters compared to four firefighters. According to the  NIST Report on Residential Fireground Field Experiments , four-person crews are able to complete time-critical fireground tasks 5.1 minutes (nearly 25%) faster than three-person crews. The increase in time to task completion corresponds with an increase in risk to both firefighters and trapped occupants. 

With four-person crews, the effectiveness of first-arriving engine company interior attack operations increases by 12% to 29% efficiency compared to three- and two-person crews respectively. The efficacy of search and rescue operations also increases by 4% to 28% with four-person crews compared to three- and two-person crews. Moreover, with a four-person company, because the first-in unit is staffed with a sufficient number of personnel to accomplish its assigned duties, the second-in company does not need to support first-in company operations and is therefore capable of performing other critical fireground tasks that are likely to improve safety and outcomes.

At the scene of a structure fire, the driver/operator of the first engine company on the scene must remain with the apparatus to operate the pump. This leaves one firefighter to assist the operator in securing a water source from a hydrant and two firefighters to deploy a hoseline and stretch it to the fire. After assisting the operator, the third firefighter should begin to assist the other two firefighters with advancing the hoseline into the building and to the location of the fire. Before initiating fire suppression, the supervising officer of the first-arriving engine company is also responsible for walking around the building to assess the situation, determine the extent of the emergency, and request any additional resources necessary to mitigate the fire.

Similarly, the driver/operator of the first-arriving ladder company must remain with the apparatus to safely position and operate the aerial device while the other three firefighters also perform critical fireground tasks such as ventilation and search and rescue. Due to the demands of fireground activities, a fire attack initiated by companies with only three or fewer firefighters is not capable of effecting a safe and effective fire suppression and/or rescue operation until additional personnel arrive. 

Insufficient numbers of emergency response units, or inadequate staffing levels on those units, expose civilians and firefighters to increased risk. It also further drains already limited fire department resources and stresses the emergency response system by requiring additional apparatus to respond from further distances. Failing to assemble sufficient resources on the scene of a fire in time to stop the spread and extinguish the fire, conduct a search, and rescue any trapped occupants puts responding firefighters and occupants in a dangerous environment with exponential risk escalation such that it is difficult to catch up and mitigate the event to a positive outcome.

Studies have shown that the more personnel that arrive on engine and ladder truck companies to the scene of a fire, the less time it takes to complete all tasks associated with fire suppression, search and rescue, and other critical fireground activities. As dispatched units arrive with sufficient numbers of firefighters, the overall time on the scene of the emergency decreases since critical fireground tasks can be completed simultaneously rather than in sequence. This also results in the decrease of on-scene risk levels. In other words, the more firefighters available to respond and arrive early to a structure fire, the less time it takes to extinguish the fire and perform search and rescue activities, thus reducing the risk of injury and death to both firefighters and trapped occupants and reducing the economic loss to the property.

As charts and table above show, units that arrive with only two firefighters on an engine or ladder truck are on the scene of a fire almost seven minutes longer than units that arrive with four firefighters on each crew. Responding units arriving with only three firefighters on an apparatus are on the scene of a fire five to six minutes longer than units that arrive with four firefighters on each apparatus. In addition to crew size, the time between the arriving crews matters to overall effectiveness and total on-scene time.

In the NIST study on the low-hazard residential fire, close stagger was defined as a one-minute time difference in the arrival of each responding company. Far stagger was defined as a two-minute time difference in the arrival of each responding company ^[2][3] . The results show a consistent pattern of units arriving with four firefighters in a close stagger or far stagger will decrease the overall time at the scene of the emergency compared to units that arrive with two or three firefighters and are more efficient in fire suppression tasks as well.

The same NIST study also examined the relationship between crew size and physiological strain. Two important conclusions were drawn from this part of the experiments.  

• Average heart rates were higher for members of small crews.
• These higher heart rates were maintained for longer durations ^[4] .

In 2018 alone, 44% of all firefighter fatalities were related to overexertion ^[5] . There is strong epidemiological evidence that heavy physical exertion can trigger sudden cardiac events ^[6] . Smaller crews are responsible for performing a number of tasks that are designed to be performed by multiple people and frequently in teams of two. This means that firefighters on smaller crews are required to work harder than larger crews to accomplish multiple tasks. Additionally, as discussed earlier, firefighters on smaller crews will also be working longer than larger-sized crews. Working harder and longer in high heat and dangerous, stressful environments increases the likelihood of firefighters suffering an injury, or worse dying, as a result of overexertion.

The charts below highlight the cardiovascular impact on firefighters based on crew size for the first-arriving engine and truck company. The heart rates of firefighters of crew sizes ranging from two to five firefighters were measured as they participated in the NIST study. The study was able to conclude that not only do smaller crews work harder and longer than larger crews, their heart rates are also more elevated for longer periods of time as well. This increases the risk of firefighters suffering an injury or death from overexertion. A firefighter suffering a medical emergency on the scene of a working fire, EMS, or rescue The incident negatively impacts outcomes and increases the risk to the community, the citizen requiring assistance, and the firefighter.

Uncontained fire in a structure grows exponentially with every passing minute. Any delay in the initiation of fire suppression and rescue operations, such as the five- to seven-minute delay that results from smaller-sized crews of firefighters, translates directly into a proportional increase in expected property, life, and economic losses as is shown in the table below. It warrants emphasizing that if a structure has no automatic suppression or detection system, a more advanced fire may exist by the time the fire department is notified of the emergency and is able to respond. Fires of an extended duration weaken structural support members, compromising the structural integrity of a building and forcing operations to shift from an offensive to defensive mode. ^[11]  As with inadequate staffing, this type of operation will continue until enough resources can be amassed to mitigate the event.

In the NIST study on the low-hazard residential fire, researchers also used fire modeling to mark the degree of the toxicity of the environment for a range of growth fires (slow, medium, and fast). Occupant exposures were calculated both when firefighters arrive earlier to the scene, and when arriving later. The modeling showed that the longer it takes for firefighters to rescue trapped occupants, the greater the risk posed to both the firefighters and occupants by increasing atmospheric toxicity in the structure.

As explained by the Commission on Fire Accreditation International, Inc. in its "Creating and Evaluating Standards of Response Coverage for Fire Departments" manual, “If resources arrive too late or are understaffed, the emergency will continue to escalate…What fire companies must do, if they are to save lives and limit property damage, is arrive within a short period of time with adequate resources to do the job. To control the fire before it reaches its maximum intensity requires geographic dispersion (distribution) of technical expertise and cost-effective clustering (concentration) of apparatus for maximum effectiveness against the greatest number and types of risks.” Optimally, there needs to be a balance between both elements.