- Author
-
McDaniel, M. A.
|
Bickman, L.
|
Edelman, P.
|
Herz, E.
- Title
- Survey of Fire Preparedness in a Midwestern City. Final Report.
- Coporate
- Loyola Univ., Chicago, Il
- Sponsor
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Washington, DC
- Report
-
NBS GCR 78-136,
December 1977,
53 p.
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Contract
- GRANT-69015
- Keywords
-
building fires
|
emergencies
|
fire prevention
|
fire safety
|
human behavior
|
life safety
|
surveys
- Abstract
- There is a lack of information regarding citizens' attitudes and knowledge in the area of fire safety. To help fill this gap, a survey was undertaken to explore the nature, extent and dimesnions of fire preparedness in a mid-western city. The survey explored respondents' attitudes toward fire safety, their knowledge of appropriate behavior in fire emergencies, their fire preparation practices and hardware as well as other items relating to fire preparedness. The survey was administered to persons from a radomly selected sample of households as well as to a sample of persons known to have been victims of fires. It was concluded that there were no apparent response differences between the fire victims and the random sample of household respondents on the variables measured. While respondents report favorable attitudes toward training and prevention, a significant number show a lack of knowledge of appropriate behavior in fire emergencies as measured by responses to scenarios. The appropriateness of a respondent's answer to any one scenario was unrelated to the appropriateness of the response for either of the other scenarios. This seems to indicate that fire safety knowledge for respondents in this sample may be situationally bound.