Main features of fire fighting interventions carried out by Belgrade Fire and Rescue Brigade

Abstract

Fire and rescue units are an important subject for the protection of the critical infrastructure. Detrimental consequences of fires and other safety and security threatening events and occurrences depend considerably on their performances, both in terms of their types and the scope of damage. One of the key factors of affected values is the length of time during which the protected values (the objects of critical infrastructure) have been exposed to hazards, such as fire, etc. The shorter the time is, the smaller the damage to these values is. In order to make this time shorter, fire and rescue units should arrive to the scene of intervention at objects of critical infrastructure in the shortest possible time in order to put out the fire. This also represents one of the fundamental performances (abilities) of fire and rescue units. Therefore, this paper considers the time of arrival to the scene of intervention at the objects of critical infrastructure and its influence on the duration of fire fighting at these objects carried out by the Belgrade Fire and Rescue Brigade, in the period 1986-2009. The research was conducted in the way that all the interventions at objects of critical infrastructure have been sorted by years in the mentioned period, where for each year mean values have been calculated in the form of the arithmetic mean of the arrival time of fire and rescue units to the scene of intervention and of the duration of the fire fighting intervention at the above mentioned objects. After that, dispersion measures have been determined for the mean values in question, in a form of standard deviation, variation range and variance. Then, the co-variance has also been set down, in order to determine the homogenous/heterogeneous elements of the statistical data set within the considered features. Finally, there have been derived linear diagrams of arrival times and fire fighting times, and their analysis has been made in order to determine the factors that contributed to the increase, stagnation or decrease of the arrival time to the scene of intervention, i.e. the time of its duration, as well as the regression analysis of interventions per mentioned parameters. Such an approach created the conditions for the prediction of further engagement of fire and rescue units, in Belgrade and in other major cities.