Washington, D.C. – The United States Fire Administration (USFA) announced that staff have completed building the USFA links directory in it’s frequently visited National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Database to each of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation Reports.
“This enhancement to the Memorial Database will make it easier for users to access detailed information for a specific fatality that they might not have otherwise known existed,” said Alexandra R. Furr, Director of the USFA National Fire Data Center. “By following the “View NIOSH Report” link below the “Final Summary” information for each of the memorial database listings with a completed NIOSH report, the user will be able to access the information”
The NIOSH firefighter investigation effort was initiated in 1998 with the objective of investigating occupational firefighter fatalities to assess and characterize the circumstances of these events in order to develop descriptive and evaluative reports, including recommendations for preventing future similar incidents. One of the USFA main program goals is a 25 percent reduction in firefighter fatalities in 5 years and a 50 percent reduction within 10 years.
“We exchange information with our partners, such as NIOSH, to better serve the men and women of the nation’s fire service. Together, our goals are to define the causes and characteristics of deaths among firefighters, to develop recommendations for the prevention of these deaths and to implement and distribute prevention information through efforts such as online databases and reports” USFA Administrator R. David Paulison said.
For the past 25 years, the USFA has tracked the number of firefighter fatalities and conducted an annual analysis. These reports and other resources related to firefighter fatalities such as the recently posted USFA Firefighter Fatality Retrospective Study 1990-2000; and a United States Forest Service report on Wildland Fire Fatalities in the United States 1990-1998 are available online at http://www.usfa.fema.gov/dhtml/inside-usfa/ff_fat.cfm.
The National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Database can be found online at http://www.usfa.fema.gov/applications/ffmem/ffmem_search.cfm.
Select the “Memorial” radio button (the “Notices” radio button is for current year notices only and will not have links to NIOSH reports) and any one or all of the years 1998-2001 to view listings with NIOSH reports (not all fatalities will have a completed report); or use the input form to specify year of death and search by name. For multiple name listings returned, select the highlighted “name” of the fallen firefighter individually, or view details for the entire list of selected records by clicking on the highlighted “Display all records.”
Individuals may also find the National Fire Data Center’s Firefighter Fatality Database of interest where they can create custom queries summarizing firefighter fatality data by year or multiple years (1994-2001) and by several other user -defined variables at http://www.usfa.fema.gov/applications/ffmem/tally_report.cfm.
