Fire Fatalities beyond the dwelling of fire origin in Scotland

1 Introduction

The first aim of this study was to scrutinise the data that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) holds on its own Incident Recording System (IRS) in order to report on fire fatalities that have occurred in dwellings in apartment and tenement buildings in Scotland, in which the victim(s) died beyond the dwelling of fire origin. The second aim was to determine whether external cladding was recorded on the IRS as being involved during the fatal fire event. The data were limited to fire incidents in Scotland, and just over 14 years’ worth of data was provided for electronic analysis. Data prior to this period were not available electronically. The data were provided, by (SFRS), using completed responses to the Incident Recording System (IRS) [1]. No wider study (for example based on independent fire investigation, media accounts or other reports and datasets) was commissioned or conducted, as part of this piece of work.

A technical steering group (TSG) comprising the Building Standards Division (BSD), SFRS and a fire consultant (Colin Todd of C. S. Todd & Associates Ltd) collectively agreed the scope of work to be performed.

This work had two phases which aimed to:

1) Review the data from IRS to identify the SFRS incident numbers for fatal fires in all multi-storey dwellings of interest (such as blocks of flats, tenement buildings etc);

2) Review the associated Fire Investigation (FI) reports, using the SFRS incident identification numbers, to identify fatalities beyond the dwelling of fire origin.

A review of the 99 FI reports (covering 105 fire fatalities) identified during Phase 1 were identified for review during Phase 2.

The SFRS were unable to provide 22 reports (covering 22 fire fatalities). The SFRS asked BRE, for five additional FI reports (covering five fire fatalities) be included in the study, bringing the total number of FI reports studied to 82 (covering 88 fire fatalities). However, during the study, the SFRS agreed that seven reports (covering seven fatalities) should be discounted from the dataset as the fatalities were not caused by the fire event(s).

In conclusion, this left the study to consider 75 FI reports (covering 81 fire fatalities).

BRE Global’s study for Phase 1 (resulting in the Draft Interim Report) was entirely confined to scrutiny and interpretation of the data held by the SFRS’ IRS. The detailed analysis of this Phase 1 work can be found in Section 2 of this report.

BRE Global’s study for Phase 2 was entirely confined to reviewing and retrieving relevant data in 75 Fire Investigation reports held by SFRS, covering 81 fire fatalities. The detailed analysis can be found in Section 3 of this report.