Features Prevention
Risk prioritization: prioritizing and strategizing your community risks

In the previous article, “Community Risk Reduction – Where do I Start?”, we highlighted key components to consider as you start your Community Risk Assessment.  Once you have completed your community assessment and identified your community risks, you are now ready for the next phase.  Prioritizing and strategizing. Not all problems are created equal.  Moreover, certain risks have a broader or deeper impact on our communities.

There is no exact cookie cutter format. Each municipality will discover that applying another municipality’s strategies may not create the same effective outcomes. The community you serve is individual and providing your community with the programs and services speaking directly to their needs will result in the most positive outcomes. Also, you may find that you can implement many different strategies to meet one or more of your risks. Building different strategies at this point will provide you with alternative solutions. These solutions can be utilized should you not see the outcomes you desired during the evaluation process.

When assessing a risk, ask yourself, “Who is most affected by this risk?” Then, “How can we reach them?” Knowing your risks and creating your plan will provide you with insight on how you want to get the message out to the residents and visitors in your community.

Be prepared – your risk assessment programs may not provide you with immediate results. Some of your programs may take years before they show results.

Education in Ontario is the first line of defence. Through education, we can provide knowledge and information to change behaviour. There is a wide variety of prevention program options: schools and senior residences, flyers, mailings, media (TV/social media), lectures, fire station/truck tours, fire department apps and your fire department website; to mention a few.

In Georgina, we created a new program to prioritize risks by community. When we look at our community in its entirety, we noted that the top three risks of fire were cooking, smoking and electrical. However, when we broke down Georgina into smaller communities, we noted that there are areas within Georgina that do not reflect these top three causes of fire. For instance, in Community #4, the top three causes of fire were batteries, woodstove/chimney and open air burning. Our new Community Captain Program empowered our crews with additional knowledge about their assigned community risks. The crews can target message the risks that speak specifically to their assigned community. Community Captain is aligned with our Home Safe Home campaign, and both of these programs are evaluated through a live data portal.

Though difficult at times to gain entry into a home for a smoke alarm check, crews have a focused message they can share with the resident – to date, 28 per cent of the homes that the crews attended show they had a face-to-face conversation with the resident on the risks to their community and provided educational material. This data is invaluable. Creating and implementing programs that can be easily evaluated is the best approach.

Take a look at what risks can be mitigated through engineering by making a change in the physical environment. Smoke alarm programs can provide early warning and home sprinkler programs can provide additional protection of the home. Therefore, mitigating injury, death or destruction of property.  Finding community partners is essential in the creation of these programs.

Inspection programs are another option in risk mitigation and the second line of defence in Ontario. Enforcement of smoke alarm programs and inspections of high-risk areas can be created and implemented, depending on your available resources. Enforcement may come with economic impact – we need to ensure that our programs reflect positive economic impacts.  Fines may result in a change of behaviour, however, positive incentives also create a change of behavior. Keep these economic factors in mind when building your programs.

Building programs that utilize your crews may also be an option. In Georgina, we have an In-Service Inspection program. Crews are trained on fire code requirements and are assigned inspections throughout the year. All inspections are entered into our live data portal for easy access and evaluation.

Our third line of defence in Ontario is emergency response. Many municipalities use the first two lines of defence for their Community Risk Reduction Plan. However, emergency response resources should also be included in your risk plan. To be effective, your response system should ensure that you have sufficient trained personnel, equipment and adequate response times to match the risk levels. When prevention and education fail, your emergency response should reduce or mitigate the impact of the event.

There are different ways to build your CRA, but the main ones are paper or live data. Georgina Fire & Rescue Services chose a live data version. You can reach out to lzwicker@georgina.ca for a demo. Continue to collect your data, build programs to prioritize your community’s risks and watch for the next article on resource investment.

Lorianne Zwicker is a deputy fire chief with Georgina Fire & Rescue Services and developed the first live data Community Risk Assessment and Community Risk Reduction Plan in Ontario. She was previously with Barrie Fire & Emergency Service as chief fire prevention officer and lead on the crew assessments for Risk Reduction and with Toronto Fire Services as captain in Training with the creation of the Operations Based Re-Inspection Program. Zwicker is a professor at Seneca College and an OFC Adjunct Instructor holding CMMIII designation with enhancements in Fire Prevention Professional and Fire Services Professional.