Background:  

Being from Arkansas, I had an opportunity to work at the local level but also at the Federal Level.  I put in 10 years with the US Fire Administration, which is part of FEMA at their headquarters in Washington, DC.

Certain kinds of neighborhoods make you feel better than other neighborhoods.  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the older neighborhoods where I grew up (in Russelville) are the kinds I like.  You have the neigborhood stores, you got the sidewalks, everything is very active on a human scale.  And then we had the suburban sprawl.  I couldn’t quite articulate why it felt different, and then someone introduced into me a landmark book, The Geography of Nowhere.  It’s worthwhile.  It enlightens you to what we’ve done to our American cities, post-war, and what drew us to that.  

Part of that was due to fire protection needs.  

Points Made:  

Roadway Consideration
It’s not just the emergency vehicle, not just the width of the lane.  When you have a working fire, you have to be able to maneuver around the apparatus.  

Prevention Budget

(10:20) If we really truly wanting to serve Mrs. Smith, as we say in the fire service, then Mrs. Smith really doesn’t want to have a fire, does she?  We want to offer Mrs. Smith a means of helping herself preventing fires and other emergencies from ever happening.  We need to change what we have in place in our line of work.  Roughly 3-5% of the typical fire department budget goes to preventing and mitigating.  The rest is for emergency response.  That’s an internal cultural issue that we need to address, it’s been identified for the past 30 years, but it’s an ongoing struggle, because we always have to maintain that state of readiness.  

(12:26) Almost everything in this room has some kind of fire code application.  From the carpet, to the wall coverings, the ceilings, the sprinkler system, is obvious, and every bit of it has to do with preventing or mitigating fire in the building.  We don’t have fires in these kinds of building.  Roughly 70% occur where we live, where we sleep.  In our homes, where these “Complete Streets” projects often go through.  

Auto Accidents VS Fires

(13:00)  The faster the street you are likely to travel down the street, the higher the probability of injuries or death due to that.