Letter of Invitation to Participate

IMPROVING FIREFIGHTER SAFETY & DEPLOYMENT
FIRE FIGHTER
SAFETY AND
DEPLOYMENT
STUDY

Dear Chief,

April 2009

As you are aware, your department was scientifically selected for a national

PRINCIPAL
INVESTIGATORS:

study that will help develop tools for local fire departments like yours to better
assess risks in their local communities and deploy resources more effectively
and efficiently. We would like to thank you for returning your station form and
let you know that we are launching the next phase of the study.

Dr. Lori Moore·Merrell
International Association of
Fire Fighters
1750 New York Ave NW
Washington, DC 20006
202-824-1594/
Lmoore@iaff.org

Dr. Kathy Notarianni
Head, Department of Fire
Protection Engineering
Worcester Polytechnic
Institute
Worcester, MA 01609
(508) 831-6786/
kanfpe@wpi.edu

Jason Averill
Building and Fire
Research Laboratory
National Institute of Standards & Technology
100 Bureau Dr.,
Gaithersburg, MD 20899
(301) 975-2585/
jason.averiJI@nist.gov

FUNDED BY:
U.s. Department of
Homeland Security's
Assistance to Firefighters
Grant Program

In this phase, we ask you to designate someone who will be asked to enter
incident information into our web-based data collection system. Employees
with in-depth knowledge of departmental response data are best for this duty.
This may include your data management staff, your information systems
managers, or quality improvement staff. Once identified, please contact
me or ask the designee to do so at 202-824-1594 or by email at
Lmoore@iaff.org.
Upon contact, these individuals will be instructed on how to access and undergo
a short web-based training session on the data entry system. The training
process is critical to ensuring the quality of the data. When the training is
complete, the department will be issued a password to access the surveys and
begin data entry. Your department will enter approximately 100 fire incidents
and 100 ALS EMS incidents. We anticipate that each entry will take less than
10 minutes. The overall time frame for data entry depends on the frequency of
these events in your jurisdiction.
Please remember that this study has the potential to effect change in the staffing
and deployment practices of the fire service overall and although participation
is voluntary, all selected departments are encouraged to cooperate so that the
scientific integrity of the study is maintained.
Thank you in advance for your contribution to this most important effort and to
a brighter future for those on the frontline. We look forward to hearing from
you!

A Collaborative Effort by:

Sincerely,

4~~

NIST"
WWW.FIREREPORTING.ORG

~

Dr. ori Moore-Merrell
Prine Ie Investigator
Firefighter Safety and Deployment Study