Classification of fatal firefighter accidents in the Netherlands: Time pressure and aim of the suppression activity

Fire fighting is a risky profession. The risks however differ per turn out. Sometimes time pressure is high and human lives are at stake. In other situations, there is hardly any time pressure and repression is only aimed at damage control. We analyzed all sufficiently documented fatal fire fighter fire suppression accidents (36 accidents causing 66 fatalities) in the Netherlands since 1946. Based upon in-depth analysis, these accidents were classified into 4 situations: high time pressure and human rescue human (6 fatalities), low time pressure and human rescue (1), high time pressure and damage control (41), and low time pressure and damage control (18). These numbers were related to the number of turn outs in each of these situations. This analysis revealed that in situations where human rescue is necessary, relatively few fire fighters got killed. In particular in the category of high time pressure and damage control a disproportional large amount of fire fighters got killed. In addition, high time pressure in general causes a disproportional amount of fatalities among fire fighters.