EDITORIAL - Study fires, not just fight them

Every year without fail, local governments and their respective fire departments all across the nation make a big splash out of welcoming fire prevention month on the first day of March. With sirens wailing, firetrucks hold motorcades through almost every street. Others hold walks. Still others put up demonstrations of fire fighting skills. There is so much hooplah to scare the Devil back to Hell.

But the celebration of fire prevention month also appears to be the most ironic. It appears that the month of March has become the most fire-prone of all the 12 months in a year. Nobody, of course, can say why. Unfortunately, it appears that nobody has ever tried to find out why. It seems that everybody has taken the irony for granted.

This should not be the case, however. Since fires do appear to become more frequent in March, maybe the government, through the Bureau of Fire Protection, should initiate studies to find out exactly why fires do seem to break out more often in March than on any other month of the year. Finding out why can go a long way in helping everybody avoid fires.

More importantly, knowing why fires do seem to favor March can help fire departments everywhere prepare better. If fire departments start to understand why fires break out more frequently in March than on any other month of the year, they can already put themselves a step or more ahead of actual emergencies. And that is a big help considering that fire often only takes minutes to get truly destructive.

Aside from being able to understand and anticipate fires, and thus be better able to fight it, fire departments can also pass on their understanding to the general public so that beyond just fighting fires, people might be better able to actually prevent their occurrence. Such a study, and the knowledge that might be derived from it, needs no further stressing and elaboration for the government to truly appreciate its importance.

The government, of course, should be congratulated for the giant steps it has taken to make firefighting equipment more available across the country. Recently there have been massive distributions of brand new firetrucks, especially to far-flung towns that heretofore never had a firetruck in their entire histories. So happy were these towns to receive the new fire trucks they were seized with a perverse longing to put the trucks to an immediate test.

But of course the ability to put out fires quickly and efficiently will always be subordinate to the ability to avoid, or at least minimize, fires at all. But the only way to be a step ahead of fires needs careful study. That is an area where government should also devote a lot of energies and resources to. Unless of course there is a secret design to actually desire fires, for reasons that may have something to do with the purchase and supply of firefighting equipment.