Arizona Fire and Burn Educators Association

  This is Article 6 — the final article in the True Cost of Fire series, focusing on the ROI Argument for CRR. Before anything else — if you have not yet used the True Cost of Fire Calculator, go to virtualcrr.com/true-cost-of-fire-calculator right now. It is free. No sign-up required. It takes your community’s local data and produces a Full Community Report you can hand directly to a city manager or present to elected officials. Everything in this article builds on what that calculator produces for your specific jurisdiction. What This Series Has Built Five articles. One argument. Fire has been costing communities far more than what appears in annual reports — and the fire service has been making the prevention investment case without the full financial picture that would make that case compelling to the people who control the budget. Article 1 introduced the gap — the difference between the $28,000 that shows up in a NFIRS/NERIS report and the $300,000 to $500,000 that a resid...

  🚀 Launch the Calculator Article Originally Posted on Virtual CRR What It Is The True Cost of Fire Calculator estimates the annual community-wide financial impact of structure fires in your jurisdiction — residential, small commercial, mid-size commercial, and large commercial. It applies national data sources (NFPA, NIBS, RS Means, U.S. Census) to inputs specific to your community, then produces a Full Community Report designed for fire chiefs to present to city managers, elected officials, and department stakeholders. Why It Exists Fire departments consistently struggle to communicate the true cost of fire to non-fire leadership. NFIRS incident reports capture direct property damage — typically $28,000 per residential fire on average — but they don’t reflect what fire actually costs a community. Uninsured contents, temporary housing, deductibles, municipal response costs, insurance payouts, business interruption, employee income impact, tax revenue loss, and litigation exposur...