Each year, tens of thousands offirefightersare injured while fighting fires,rescuing people, responding toemergency medicalandhazardous materialincidents, ortrainingfor their job. The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) recently released a report,Fire-Related Firefighter Injuries Reported to the National Fire Incident Reporting System (2010-2012),looking at how firefighters got hurt over this period.
The report said that annually, from 2010 to 2012, there were an estimated 70,450 firefighter injuries. Of these injuries, 31,550 occurred on the fireground. An additional 4,150 injuries occurred while responding to or returning from anincident, which includes but is not limited to fires.
While the majority of injuries are minor, a significant number are debilitating and career-ending. Such injuries exact a great toll on the fabric of the fire service, the report said.
Download the entire report as a PDF athttp://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v15i6.pdf.
More topical reports from the USFA available athttp://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/.
