Austin Fire Department
Fire and Life Safety Cycle

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The Fire and Life Safety Cycle demonstrates how AFD’s fire suppression efforts actually represent a very small portion of the department’s overall responsibility. Through education, inspections and code enforcement, the hope is that many potential emergencies can be prevented or, if not prevented, that losses are minimized. A brief description of each element in the cycle follows:

Education of Industry and the Public
The safety cycle begins and ends with education. Simply stated: what has been learned from previous fire experiences and what can be done to address those issues? Keep in mind that fire and building codes are essentially written in tragedy; as major fire events have occurred over history, fire and building oprofessionals have addressed these lessons through the revisions of model codes. Fire service professionals take the cumulative national fire experience and incorporate it into the model codes. Thus, all codes are fluid, dynamic documents that reflect the prevailing wisdom of years of fire experience. With the knowledge gained from Austin’s local fire experience, coupled with national trends, AFD initiates aggressive educational and enforcement campaigns to address the behavioral aspects of fire ignition.

Design Fire-Safe Buildings
Using the model codes, fire professionals regulate the design of buildings so that they can withstand the attack of a hostile fire. Generally speaking, the greater the number of people and the larger the structure, the more restrictive the fire code will be for building design and fire-resistive construction. AFD’s staff of professional engineers reviews architectural drawings of new construction to ensure that new buildings meet minimum standards for fire-resistive construction. A properly designed building can withstand the onslaught of fire for a sufficient amount of time, allowing occupants the needed time to escape, and firefighters time to arrive and start attacking the fire.

Design Early Warning and Suppression Systems
Once the building’s structure and construction features have met the minimum code standards, provisions for early detection and suppression of fire are made. The philosophy behind early detection and suppression is to alert the occupants of a building of danger, give them time to evacuate and call for assistance, and then check the progress of a fire so that it is still manageable when firefighters arrive. So, given that a building is designed properly (fire-resistant), has working smoke or heat detectors (early notification), and maintains an operational sprinkler or other extinguishing system (fire mitigation), the overall life-safety condition of the structure is improved. The AFD maintains a staff of professional engineers who review all system blueprints for fire protection technology features; this is done for every building in the City of Austin.

Regulate Compliance Through Certificate of Occupancy Inspections
Before an occupant or tenant can move into a new structure built within the City of Austin, that structure has to first pass a series of "final" inspections from City staff. The Fire Department conducts a "Fire Final" inspection where all systems are tested for operational effectiveness and code compliance. If a structure cannot pass this inspection, it cannot be occupied.

Enforce Compliance Through Maintenance Inspections
Once a structure is occupied, the AFD conducts routine "maintenance" inspections to ensure that systems remain operational and that business practices do not inhibit/alter either construction features or system applications. While the department would like to conduct a maintenance inspection of every inspectable property within the City, to do so would require a tremendous amount of resources in both personnel and equipment. Recognizing this limitation, the department conducts maintenance inspections based on risk; in other words, the highest risk properties (based on trends in dollar loss and life loss) are the first to receive regular maintenance inspections. In Austin, a leading property type in fire risk is multi-family residential (apartments); thus AFD’s entire in-service inspection program is devoted to inspecting these structure types.

Emergency Response
Assuming that all fires cannot be prevented through the proper construction of buildings or the provision of early warning and detection devices (technology will never address the leading cause of fires – human behavior), the department maintains a fleet of modern apparatus, staffed by some of the most highly trained men and women in the country. Literally, by dialing 911, within minutes citizens have millions of dollars of equipment and resources driving up the street, staffed by dozens of skilled firefighters.

Learning From Experience
Once the fire is extinguished, AFD employs numerous tools for learning. Fire investigators study the fire itself to determine cause; over time, investigators can determine if there are trends in fire ignitions – such as improperly discarded cigarettes on upholstered furniture. These lessons can then be incorporated into the cumulative knowledge of the fire service, and subsequently addressed through the revision of codes (fire-resistive fabric on upholstered furniture). In Austin, post-incident inspections are conducted to determine if previous inspection efforts had a mitigating effect on the outcome of the fire. With the knowledge gained from local fire experience, coupled with national trends, aggressive educational campaigns to address the behavioral aspects of fire ignition are initiated.

One can see that the cycle then returns to its beginning … and the process starts all over. As lessons are learned, they are incorporated into educational campaigns and fire codes, which are enforced and maintained in the community through review and inspections. Meanwhile, AFD provides the essential emergency response force that is trained and ready to respond at a moment’s notice in the event the cycle fails. Finally, AFD possesses the tools and training to learn from experience and start the cycle over…making the Austin community safer with each fire event.