Report: NFPA's "Firefighter Injuries in the United States"
Author: Michael J. Karter, Jr. and Joseph L. Molis
Issued: October 2012
The report includes statistics on line-of-duty firefighter injuries in 2011 from NFPA’s survey of fire departments – including non-incident-related injuries, trends, and brief narratives on selected incidents.
Introduction
NFPA estimates that 70,090 firefighter injuries occurred in the line of duty in 2011. An estimated 30,505 (43.5%) of the all firefighter injuries occurred during fireground operations.
An estimated 13,295 occurred during other on duty activities, while 14,905 occurred at nonfire emergency incidents. The leading type of injury received during fireground operations was strain, sprain or muscular pain (50.7%), followed by wound, cut, bleeding, bruise (14.5%). Regionally, the Northeast had the highest fireground injury rate.
