We Must Do Better

By Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell, U.S. Fire Administrator

The mission of the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) is to support and strengthen the fire and emergency medical services to prepare for, prevent, mitigate and respond to all hazards.

The logo of the eagle represents the federal presence and support of the nation’s fire and emergency medical services. The red flames are associated with the danger, destruction and hazards of fire. The four stars represent the four major areas we use to accomplish the mission:

• Training
• Technology and Research
• Data Analysis
• Public Education

After the 9/11 attack, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created and the USFA was moved from the Department of Commerce to DHS as a component of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The current FEMA Administrator, Deanne Criswell, who also has a firefighter background, often speaks about FEMA’s role in Community Preparedness and Resilience. As I lead the USFA, we will concentrate on the same two words, Preparedness and Resilience, but with a focus on our fire and EMS departments and our Responders.

We must do better to prepare for the changing landscape of what we refer to as all hazards. With ever-increasing incidence of wildland fire and other disasters, it is not just a few departments affected.

The fire and emergency medical services throughout this nation must continue to work to prevent fires and other emergencies but also prepare to respond to the threats and risks today, not just those for which we have traditionally trained.

We must do better to prepare for the changing landscape of what we refer to as all hazards. With ever-increasing incidence of wildland fire and other disasters, it is not just a few departments affected. There is a much broader impact and it’s growing. As the fire service, we must redouble our efforts to prevent ignition and harden the wildland-urban interface including proper roofs, sprinklers and clearing property.

USFA is working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and other federal partners to ensure that we have the science to drive our messaging. We will work to ensure that the results of NIST wildland and Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) experiments at the parcel level are translated into messaging for you and the communities in the interface affected by wildland fires. We, as the fire service have been able to reduce the incidence of structure fire over the years and we can do it with wildland and WUI.

In that same context, we must also better prepare our responders with more appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) for wildland response, while continuously evaluating our wildland and disaster deployment models to assure safe, efficient and effective use of resources.

Our fire and EMS departments large and small, career, combination or volunteer must continue to prepare to respond to the consequence of the actions of violent extremists and during civil unrest that will inevitably occur. This preparedness may include continued or new methods of training with our law enforcement partners for integrated response.

Like many other federal agencies, our National Fire Data Center along with local fire and EMS departments must continue to modernize using advancements in technology and sensors, as well as non-traditional data sources coupled with community risk assessments and historic response data to better understand the reality of today’s risk environment including the impact of climate change on our resources.

In that same context, we must also better prepare our responders with more appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) for wildland response, while continuously evaluating our wildland and disaster deployment models to assure safe, efficient and effective use of resources.

For us in the USFA specifically, modernization will address the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) system. I anticipate this effort being two-fold:

1) Modernize the data capture, collection, assembly, analytics and reporting capability of the National Data Center.

2) Review, revamp and redeploy NFIRS to be relevant and timely and perpetuate good quality data entry and clean data capture.

In another area, we want to ensure that State, local, tribal and territorial governments have the knowledge and understanding regarding evaluation of their overall capacity and capability to respond. We also want to ensure that leaders consider how to match emergency resources deployed to the risk environment to which firefighters and paramedics are responding. In doing so, the vulnerability to firefighter injury and death, civilian injury and death, and property loss is reduced.

On another front, USFA will play a role in addressing the physical and behavioral health challenges that continue to affect our responders. For example, we will be working with our federal partners at National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to continue to study PPE and to assure we can stand up to the National Firefighter Cancer Registry. We will also work with our fire service partners to expand behavioral health resilience training programs to assure that responders have the resources they need to stay healthy both physically and mentally.

Finally, together we will continue to address diversity, equity, and inclusion in the fire service. This is a priority for us, and I believe that together with the fire service we have the ability and the desire to lead and implement programs to create an inclusive, diverse, and psychologically safe workplace. We can teach cultural awareness of the challenges faced by firefighters from underrepresented groups. I believe that there is a growing willingness to challenge and transform the harmful aspects of the traditional fire service culture.

It is my absolute honor to serve as your Fire Administrator. USFA stands ready to engage with our industry and I look forward to working with you.

On October 25, 2021, President Joseph Biden appointed Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell as the 12th U.S. Fire Administrator. Dr. Moore-Merrell has spent 35 years in the fire service and now holds the top position in the industry. Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell began her career as a paramedic with the Memphis Fire Department in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1987. In 1993, she was recruited to the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) as the Fire-Based EMS specialist and ultimately led the research division. During her tenure at the IAFF, Dr. Moore-Merrell worked with hundreds of fire departments across the country to conduct risk assessments and overall emergency response system analysis. She also led several large-scale experiments assessing the effects of crew size and assembly of effective response forces on the health, safety and well-being of firefighters and civilians, and property loss from fire. She retired from the IAFF in 2019 to start an international data institute to build data tools for fire departments to use for decision-making at the local level.