This article covers the standards and specific requirements for effective and efficient response to emergency events, rescue and salvage operations. It focuses on the organization and deployment of emergency medical operations, special and fire suppression operations, to the public by Career (NFPA 1710) and Volunteer (NFPA 1720) departments to protect citizens. Also, the occupational safety and health of agency response personnel. The course content is based on NFPA 1710 (Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments) & NFPA 1720 (Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Volunteer Fire Departments) These standards are internationally recognized and cover functions and objectives of fire department emergency service delivery, response capabilities, and resources, including staffing levels, response times, and levels of service. Also, General criteria for managing resources and systems, such as health and safety, incident management, training, communications, and pre-incident planning are also provided.
Emergency response agencies and organizations seek to reduce the loss of lives and properties due to accident breaks to the barest minimum to ensure the safety of all, property, and environment through prompt and timely response to emergency calls. This mandate, however, has not been effectively demonstrated in all tiers of the responders and organizations including the Federal, State, and Private sectors. They lack significantly, in the fulfillment of their mission and vision, through poor and delayed response, unprofessionalism, and significant skill and knowledge gaps from planning through the implementation stages.
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Nigerians are anything but proud of the risk management and emergency response sector from end to end. This starts with the planners and designers including architects, construction firms, building consultants, town planning, and urban development units that fail to effectively include these aspects in the concepts thus building failure from inception. This is further worsened by contractors with no consideration for the plight of the populace and lastly by poor response and containment philosophies.
Delayed intervention in one of the greatest problems in an emergency in Nigeria is it the Fire service, the First aid, and Medical personnel, NEMA, Police, and other services involved in emergency management.
Most persons can recount the sour taste whenever they have experiences with the services in an event of road accidents, building collapse (remember Lekki Gardens), or fire incidents of which some notable ones according to Daily Trust include NECOM -House; NEPA -Headquarter Marina Lagos; NITEL -building Lagos; Defense Headquarters Lagos; Ariaria Market Aba; Ministry of Education Lagos; NITEL Exchange -Benin city; Kano Market fire; Onitsha Market fire; Minna Central Market, fire; Mandila building, Balogun Lagos; Wuse Market fire; Lapai House, Lagos; Kings way building, Lagos; Federal Secretariat, Lagos; Fine coat Factory fire, 1004 Housing Lagos and more recent Yaba Tech hostel fire, this could be blamed on lack of adequate manpower, the poor state of firefighting equipment, bad roads, etc. the list goes on.
In recent times the emergency services have improved with a report in 2015 stating that the fire service particularly responded to 72 fire-related calls in Abuja and 182 in Lagos, but failed to give adequate details if the response was timely and adequate. The emergency response sector is still very far from being on par with international standards and Nigerian with the masses still hoping that lack of water at the moment, no fuel, or that vehicles mechanical fault or other do not constitute reasons for loss of lives, businesses, and property. Maybe there will be more improvement with the recent inclusion of upgrading of equipment in the national budget and the country leader understands that sustainability is NOT POSSIBLE WITHOUT RISK MITIGATION. And most of all that emergency operations have a benchmark of the minimum time they must adhere to for adequate rescue operations.
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Emergency Service response is a complex system involving variables and constants. All emergency responses follow a timeline beginning with a discovery of an emergency and ending with closure or mitigation of the emergency situation. The variables are the discovery of the emergency, reactions of the people involved, amount of time to react, weather conditions, and traffic conditions. The constants are emergency system infrastructure and the road network. To manage response time, you have to manage these elements. Volunteer and Career departments should be treated differently when it comes to response time standards (Although there are no Volunteer fire service providers in Nigeria Like is the case in other parts of the world where issues of safety are taken seriously, there should be in place in Nigeria e.g. fire-fighters-club which should be a citizen volunteer organization like the Red Cross in which able-bodied men and women are encouraged to be members and are trained from time to time on the basics of fire safety and firefighting as this would go a long way to enhance the job of firefighting (2015, News24).
Particularly for Fire Scenarios, the goal in NFPA 1710 is as follows: 60 seconds to turn out, 4 minutes for the first engine company to arrive, and 8 minutes for the full first-alarm assignment for at least 90 percent of all fire calls. The rationale behind this is the fact that a room fire will reach a critical stage in fire development (point of flashover) in about 8 to 10 minutes. The variables are whether or not the fire room is ventilated (open doors or windows), size of the compartment, configuration, fuel load, etc. In the worst-case scenario, the critical temperature is reached and the flashover engulfs the room in the fire before firefighters arrive to control the event. With flashover, the fire moves beyond the room of origin. NFPA 1710 response times are meant to ensure that flashover is prevented through fire control. (Automatic fire sprinklers are intended to control fire development to prevent flashover, thus keeping the fire to the area or room of origin.) With a good response time and adequate available water supply, fully staffed fire departments stand a much better chance of minimizing fire damage. NFPA 1720 applies to volunteers who typically don’t have personnel on-duty in stations and instead respond to page-out from home, work, or elsewhere. It is this fact of volunteer response that introduces a key variable into the picture. In this standard response, goal criteria are very different and intended to reflect the nature of a volunteer response system.
For response time to incidents in general, 1720 provides the following benchmarks:
- Urban Zones with >1000 people/sq. mi. call for 15 staff to assemble an attack in 9 minutes, 90% of the time.
- Suburban Zones with 500-1000 people/sq. mi. call for 10 staff to assemble an attack in 10 minutes, 80% of the time.
- Rural Zones with <500 people/sq. mi. call for 6 staff to assemble an attack in 14 minutes, 80% of the time.
- Remote Zones with a travel distance =8 mi. call for 4 staff, once on scene, to assemble an attack in 2 minutes, 90% of the time.
To understand more about NFPA 1710 and 1720, the various response time for career rescue departments like the Fire Service, NEMA, Volunteer rescue like the Red Cross, the numbers of service outlets required in an area, personnel required for effective mitigation and management of emergency and standard for other emergency rescues by career and volunteers kindly register for more info@nfpawa.com.
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