Fire Fighter

A fire department may also provide “fire protection” or fire prevention services, whereby firefighters visit homes and give fire safety advice and fit smoke alarms for members of the public. In many countries fire protection or prevention is seen as an important role for the fire service, as preventing a fire from occurring in the first place can obviously save lives.

Most public or municipal fire departments also carry out an enforcement role, to ensure that commercial dwellings (hotels, offices, factories, and so on) are equipped with adequate fire precautions to ensure that in the event of fire, people can safely evacuate the premises unharmed. This is also part of the protection or prevention role.

Fire departments are organized in a system of administration, services, training, and operations; for example:

• Administration is responsible for supervision, budgets, policy, and human resources.
• Service offers protection, safety, and education to the public.
• Training creates skilled people with the knowledge to perform their duties.
• Operations perform the tasks to successfully save the public from harm.

A fire department is normally set up where it can have fire stations and sophisticated fire apparatus strategically deployed throughout the area under its control so that dispatchers can send fire engines, fire trucks, or ambulances from the fire stations closest to the incident. Larger departments have branches within themselves to increase efficiency, composed of volunteers, support, and research.

• Volunteers give advantages to the department in a state of emergency.
• Support organizing the resources within and outside of the department.
• Research is to give advantages in new technologies for the department.

The fire department’s jurisdiction is organized by the governmental body that controls the department, although there are private fire departments as well. This comes from a municipality, county, prefecture, state, province, or national type of government. The most common type of government control is at the municipality level. The jurisdiction size and organization would be setup by department or the government in-change of these duties. This deals with the placement of fire stations, equipment, and personnel within the area of control.

Fire departments periodically survey their jurisdiction areas and use the data for redeploying proper coverage. This data comes from travel time, range from station, and/or a population survey. This brings equal service to the entire community and gives the department efficient places to launch operations.