TABLE OF CONTENTS In this chapter the Civilian Casualties Report (Form NFIRS-2) for Apartment Fires (code 42: apartment, tenements, flats) during the year 1993 will be used to determine the most important personal factors affecting the proportion of fatalities among casualties in a fire (for a description of NFIRS see Section 8.2).
In addition to the factors relating to the fire that were studied in Chapter 8 using the Fire Incident data, the Civilian Casualty data allow the study of personal factors as well.
In the Civilian Casualty data, under the label severity , it is indicated whether the casualty was just injured or killed. Thus the proportion of fatalities can be studied.
A study of the fire-related factors in the Civilian Casualty data does not add anything new. This is not surprising, since the data described in both files are identical, albeit couched in different terms. There are insignificant differences due to the gaps in the data not being identical.
The most important fire-related factors are the area of fire origin, the extent of fire damage, the type of material ignited and the ignition factor.
The personal factors considered in this chapter are as follows:
Sex
Familiarity with structure
Location at ignition
Condition before injury
Condition preventing escape
Activity at time of injury
Cause of injury
Age group.
The most important factors turned out to be, in order of importance:
Condition preventing escape
Condition...
