Overview

A survey was sent electronically to more than 8,500 members of the International Association of Fire Chiefs on Wednesday, January 15, 2003, to assess the potential impact of a military reserve or National Guard “Call-Up” to active duty and its effects on the Fire Service, particularly in the U.S.

The survey was intentionally brief; only 3 questions. A private, third-party vendor hosted both the web-based questionnaire and provided real time tabulation of results plus the capture of text responses to two of the three long response or “comment” questions on the survey.

The intent was not to obtain data for purely statistical purposes. The intent of the survey was to obtain the most accurate picture possible of whether or not the leaders of the fire service felt that their departments might face any effect at all from a military “call up” – and to try to assess to what degree the absence of fire and emergency response personnel might be expected to impact departmental budgets, staff/coverage, or other issues.

Within the first 24 hours after launching the survey, more than 700 fire and emergency services departments had responded. By the end of the third day, the survey had received more than 1,200 individual responses including more than 725 detailed “verbatims.” The final tally as of this summary was 1,271 total respondents or a 15.2% return rate with 861 additional comments.

A review of the numerical results on a question-by-question basis is provided below.