Rethinking attitudes towards fire suppression

[Jammer]

Prior to the mid-20th century there was a self-help culture around fire suppression -- in the event of a fire, the owners and occupants of the affected structure were under a societal expectation to make an effort to extinguish the fire. Fire insurance was expensive and did not pay out reliably, and fire departments were slower to respond and less effective at stopping loss of life and property.


This needlepoint, showing some heat damage, was one of the few items removed from a burning house by my relatives in the early 1900s. Like the practice of fighting fires, the practice of removing valuable items from a burning structure was discouraged during the era of professionalization of firefighting in the post-WWII era.


In 2019, the most recent year for which complete statistics are available, there were 3,704 deaths due to fire, and property losses totaling $14.8 billion. (source: https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/) Generally, deaths declined due to improvements in the safety of electrical and heating systems, and a decline in cigarette smoking, through 2012, and have increased since then due to the decline in use of fire retardant materials for environmental/health reasons and the increased use of composite and manufactured wood structural components in housing. From 1920 through 2012 there was a more or less linear decline from the 1920 figure of 9300 deaths by fire.


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