Goal to reduce occurrence and impact of emergency events
INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE office of the Illinois state fire marshal
Springfield, Ill. (January 22, 2020) – Community Risk Reduction (CRR) is a data-driven process to identify and prioritize local risks, followed by the integrated and strategic investment of resources to reduce their occurrence and impact. Governor JB Pritzker has proclaimed the week of Monday, January 20, 2020 through Sunday, January 26th, 2020 CRR Week in Illinois.
“[The Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM)] has helped established a taskforce in Illinois to help identify risks and ways to help the fire service mitigate impacts on personnel and residents in their communities,” says Illinois State Fire Marshal Matt Perez. “OSFM encourages local departments to utilize the concepts of CRR and identify the needs and challenges that face their communities. OSFM has a $50,000 grant to help support local efforts for developing and implementing CRR.”
The goal of Community Risk Reduction Week is to raise awareness among the fire service that implementing CRR concepts will make communities and departments safer. The idea of CRR week originated with individuals from various fire departments across the country. The focus of the week will be on the five “E’s” of CRR: Education, Engineering, Enforcement, Economic Incentive and Emergency Response. Any fire department or community, big or small, rural or metro, paid or volunteer can use CRR concepts to identify risks in their communities and start to plan how to reduce those risks.
According to crrweek.org, every 24 seconds, a fire department in the United States responds to a fire somewhere in the nation. A fire occurs in a structure at the rate of one every 63 seconds with a home fire occurring every 88 seconds nationally. The fire service continues to see an increase in medical calls, surpassing 80% of total call volume in some jurisdictions.
For more information on CRR Week, please visit the CRR Week website.
For fire and other emergencies in Lansing, please call 911. For non-emergency related issues, call 708-895-7400.
