Firefighter Casualties

The term on duty refers to being involved in operations at the scene of an emergency, whether it is a fire or nonfire incident; responding to or returning from an incident; performing other officially assigned duties such as training, maintenance, public education, inspection, investigations, court testimony, and fundraising; and being on call, under orders, or on standby duty except at the individual’s home or place of business. Ten-year (1992–2001) trends of casualties also are examined.

DEATHS

This discussion of firefighter fatalities is a synopsis of the U.S. Fire Administration’s (USFA’s) report, Firefighter Fatalities in the United States in 2001, USFA FA–237, August 2002. Supplemental

data from USFA’s firefighter fatality database are also included. No data from the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) are used.

The fire service, and the nation, suffered a catastrophic loss of 341 firefighters in the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001. This 1-day loss of firefighters, unparalleled in the annals of U.S. history, was more than triple the average number of firefighter deaths over an entire year and nine times greater than other 2001 firefighter deaths on the fireground. Although an analysis of firefighter deaths cannot ignore this event, the 10-year trends and 2001 focus become so skewed from the norm as to make comparisons from year to year difficult. Most of the charts in this section, therefore, exclude firefighter fatalities from the WTC event, except where the magnitude of that tragedy needs to be emphasized.

In 2001, 443 firefighters died, 341 at the WTC on September 11 and 102 in other operations

throughout the year.1,2 In the previous four editions of Fire in the United States, the calculated 10-year trends of firefighter deaths decreased (35 percent in the 9th, 10th, and 11th editions and 17 percent in the 12th edition). In the 1992–2001 period, however, the trend increased 30