Using community education interventions to build resilience and avert crises: how accidental dwelling fires decreased in Essex County, UK

Abstract

Can public administrators use community education interventions in disaster management? We examine community education interventions as tools that raise awareness of hazards, communicate risks, and develop resilience in communities. We study a programme in Essex County, UK, in which Essex County Fire and Rescue Services used the results of proportional hazards modelling to identify localities at risk of accidental dwelling fires and to target community education interventions. We then assess the intervention's impact by comparing the incidence of accidental dwelling fires before and after the Parish Safety Volunteer programme began, as well as between treated and untreated areas, in a differencein-difference regression. We find that there are greater reductions in accidental dwelling fires in treated areas than in untreated areas, and argue that community education interventions can forge vital networks and increase safety for vulnerable people, as well as build trust and resilience important for disaster and crisis prevention.

Policy‐making, policy‐taking, and policy‐shaping: Local government responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…The global nature of COVID-19 has necessitated a more top-down and centralised approach from national and provincial/state governments than is usually required or prescribed for localised emergencies such as floods and fires. Such an approach appears to contradict best practices emerging from the literature on MLG, PBDM, and DEM that each stress the importance of local decision-making and bottom-up processes as a means of promoting subsidiarity and building local resilience-a point amplified by Reid (2021) and clearly demonstrated in terms of disaster prevention by Reinhardt and Chatsiou (2019) and Rodin (2014). However, faced with a truly global pandemic, the need for a coordinated national and regional response appears to have superseded local and place-based approaches in each of the four countries studied.…”

The evaluation of Safe and Well visits as part of the prevention activities of Fire and Rescue Services in England

“…The new Safe and Well visits have only been assessed to a very limited extent (Clarke, 2018(Clarke, , 2020HMICFRS, 2020) because they are still developing, although a few studies have evaluated Home Fire Safety Checks. These generally show encouraging results of reducing domestic fires (Arch and Thurston, 2013;London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, 2013;Reinhardt and Chatsiou, 2019). A few studies into Home Fire Safety Checks have also adopted different perspectives.…”

“…The authors were commissioned by NFRS to undertake an empirical assessment of the Safe and Well visits programme to understand their Safe and Well model of delivery and suggest any improvements to their current practice. In order to do this, we first explored the definition and assessment of vulnerability by drawing upon existing literature on vulnerabilities in the emergency services to understand how the Fire and Rescue Services identify vulnerable people (Arch and Thurston, 2013;Williams and Manning, 2016;Reinhardt and Chatsiou, 2019;Clarke, 2020;Mahmood et al, 2020;Addidle and Liddle, 2021). Secondly, we looked at various potential models of evaluation for Safe and Well visits against which to evaluate Nottinghamshire's current practice and to compare the benefits and level of investment against benefits and investment in other services.…”

Local emergency management special issue: guest editors’ introduction

“…Their findings provide nuanced insight for local officials involved in recovery planning and financial management. Reinhardt and Chatsiou (2019) examine local government community education interventions designed to deliver prevention and safety information. In the Parish Safety Volunteers Pilot Project, Essex County Fire and Rescue Services used findings about areas at higher risk of having accidental dwelling fires to launch an information campaign throughout the county.…”

“…Much collaboration for emergency management occurs formally between sectors, through codified arrangements. Reinhardt and Chatsiou (2019) explore the use of volunteers to deliver community education in crisis prevention, studying a programme that asked volunteers to visit local homes and review fire and burglary safety. The authors compare accidental dwelling fires before and after the program was implemented and find a significant decrease in fires among parishes that received volunteer visits.…”