All departments keep some type of data. The most commonly referred to data are the number of runs and response times. But there are a lot more data we should be capturing and sharing to help sell our communities on the need to be funded so we not only survive but thrive.

I recently had the privilege of attending a presentation titled “Counting Calls” by Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell, assistant to the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) in charge of data, research, and technical assistance. The presentation was about data and how we need to capture and use more data to show our value to the community. The topic might not seem as engaging as firefighting tactics or lights and sirens. But, acknowledging that documenting our activities is not how most of us prefer to spend our time, her presentation made data collection a most compelling task we must embrace.

TOTAL VALUE

The basic premise is that we need to show our total value in a quantitative manner. Quantitative data will almost always win out over subjective and emotional debates when it comes to justifying funding. This applies to funding for stations, apparatus, equipment, staffing (career and volunteer), and support (such as annual physicals) for fire department members. It has been said many times, true, that the side with the best data usually wins. A key point in Merrell’s presentation was that we must quantify other activities in addition to call response. In addition to number of calls, many departments also track dollars lost because of fire, dollars saved because of suppression, number of smoke detectors installed, and other “low-hanging-fruit” types of activities.

However, we must tell a more complete story of what we do and, maybe more importantly, what we can’t do—i.e., our limitations because of a lack of funding for our service needs. For example, a volunteer fire department needs quantifiable data on the amount of time it averages to assemble an effective firefighting force to suppress a fire—think two in, two out. The community needs to know if its department might not be able to safely implement an interior search and rescue for extended minutes because of a lack of staffing. Department leaders must be up front and say that they can only protect exposures and conduct defensive operations with limited staffing. For career departments, there must be clear and accurate data that show how many calls a company misses during a year because it is on other calls. This is referred to as “system capacity.” I retired from a department that, like many departments, can easily run out of resources during a thunderstorm. The community should also be reminded that response times apply to emergency medical service calls, especially CPR, as well as fire calls.

TRUE DATA

Data collection and reporting must be “true.” Unfortunately, there is inconsistency in reporting “true” response times. Some departments track response times as the time the apparatus leaves the station until it arrives on the scene. However, “true” response time is the time the call is received, not dispatched (as this ignores call processing time), until action is taken on th