Fire Prevention on Houses and Response Time: Safer Community Comparison between UAE, UK, Canada, and the USA - Capstone Project Example

The paper "Fire Prevention on Houses and Response Time: Safer Community Comparison between UAE, UK, Canada, and the USA" is a good example of a capstone project on social science.

• Chapter 1 - Introduction
  • Background

In 1998, residential or home fires killed 575 children below 14 years of age in the United States alone. Out of these 575, 70% died from smoke inhalation while 30% of injuries are caused by flames and burns. The leading causes of these residential fires include home cooking equipment and smoking materials while most fire originates from bedroom or living room. Moreover, nearly 80% of these were started by children playing with matches or lighters. In the United Kingdom, 80% of fire-related deaths occur in the home. Statistics suggest that these fires were caused by smoking material, cooking equipment, and electrical appliances. In 2004 for instance, there were 405 deaths and 12,200 injuries in the UK resulting from dwelling fires. The result of the fire fatality rate conducted in the United Kingdom from 2002 to 2004 suggests that about 5,000 people die each year from residential fires. Moreover, the cost of fire in dwellings is estimated to be around £7.7 billion or an average of £25,000 per domestic fire.

Committed to reducing death, injury, and damage caused by fire, the UK government made a number of changes in its fire safety law through the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Since the majority of all fire deaths occur in the home, the government directed the efforts of the county's fire and rescue services in fire prevention strategies. The move towards the greater emphasis of fire prevention changed the role of the fire and rescue service as enforcers of the new regulation and educator of the community about the fire . According to, the fire and rescue service often carry out fire prevention activities in their locality in order to reduce the number of fires and associated deaths and injuries. These include public education, an inspection of residential buildings, visits to schools and community groups, posters, television advertising, fire prevention week, and other publicity campaigns. Moreover, countering the effect of home fires requires the UK fire and rescue services to improve their response time which was criticized for getting slower every year since 2000. For instance, the response time that is less than five minutes recorded in 2000 was 46 percent and 35 percent in 2006. These figures suggest that more than half of the fire in 2006 took them 6 minutes or more to arrive at the scene. These facts suggest that the reduction of fires in houses or residential buildings is best achieved using fire prevention and improved response time.

• • Aims and Objectives

The aims of this study include the following:

• To investigate how fire prevention and improved firefighter response time can help enhance safety in homes and the rest of the community.
• To determine the role of fire and rescue service in fire prevention and reducing fire-related deaths and injuries in residential building fires.
• To determine and compare the different fire prevention strategies in the UAE. UK, USA, and Canada
• To determine best practices that may be applicable to UAE

The objectives of this study include the following:

• Determine the extent and number of fire incidents fire-related deaths and injuries in homes
• Determine the effect of fire prevention strategies and response time in reducing home fires.
• To review relevant literature on fire prevention and firefighter response time
• Analyze the concept of fire prevention and its real-life application
• Determine the role of FRS in the implementation of fire prevention
• Determine the extent of fire prevention campaigns in the UAE, UK, US, and Canada
  • The rationale of this study