The causes of fire fatalities and serious fire injuries in Scotland

摘要

An aging population with increased vulnerabilities from conditions such as dementia will need protecting in ways that are increasingly more sophisticated than those used to date for able-bodied people capable of responding to alarms - and acting appropriately to save their own lives. The expectation that a fire-alarm system will activate, and that the Fire and Rescue Services will be informed and arrive to tackle the fire in time to save lives may often be unrealistic for elderly and vulnerable people. The next phase of research work will focus on specific details for each of the 126 fire fatalities, which will involve a detailed analysis of the fire investigation report generated for each fatal incident. Further information on the person's status, surrounding circumstances, the fire's behaviour and the cause of the fatality will be reviewed. The recommendations proposed so far will be examined for each fire investigation report in order to assess their potential effectiveness. This research work demonstrates that, with a broad group of collaborating expert stakeholders, this type of study can lead to relevant and practical outputs that the stakeholders can then participate in implementing. BRE is now aiming to complete similar collaborative studies in other countries to identify what fire-safety measures may be applied in different regions of the world.