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Fire Safety Vulnerabilities

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In the fire service we deal with many hazards and risks. Believe it or not we also have vulnerabilities. Hazards, risks, and vulnerability also apply to emergency management and everyday life and when all three converge you can have a disaster on your hands. Before leaning how the three can create a disaster we must know what a hazards is, what risk is and what vulnerabilities are. First, what is a hazard?
A paper cut, falling, fire, earthquake, the sun and driving are all hazards. Hazard as defined by Fire and Emergency Services COMPANY OFFICER Fourth Edition is a “Condition, substance, or device that can directly cause an injury or loss; usually refers to the source of a risk.” Hazards come for nature or natural disasters and technological or man-made disasters. Hazards are all around us and the way we interact with them will determine our risk with that hazard. …show more content…
Driving a vehicle is a hazard and your exposer to that is the risk. Now we can reduce the risk with driver’s education, experience, and speed limits. If the hazard is driving and the risk is the exposure to diving, then what is vulnerability?
Vulnerability describes the characteristics and circumstances of a community, system or asset that makes it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard according to the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management. Four main vulnerabilities are physical, social, economic and environmental. A vulnerability of driving can be ejection or flat tire. Socially it may be “not cool” to wear a seat belt and by not wearing it you now have increased your vulnerability of being ejected during an accident creating an unnecessary risk while being subjected to the hazard of

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