From January 1, 2010 to August 26, 2012 there were about 400 calls received by the Detroit EMS related burns associated with structure fires. In that same time there were only 15 calls related to electrical fire burns.

This post exams the distribution and frequency to which Detroit EMS responded to burn related calls. In addition to showing the overall frequency and distribution of burn related EMS calls, this post also breaks down the calls by the following types:

This information was obtained and analyzed as part of the ongoing efforts of the Green and Healthy Homes Initiative-Detroit . While these calls presented in this post are not mutually exclusive, each call in the time frame presented was assigned to one of the above categories.

While this information was made available for GHHI purposes, the City of Detroit only publically presents information related to the number of fire calls responded to by the City of Detroit Fire Department for 2006 on their website. According to that data, in 2006 the fire department responded to 33,441 fires and 131,481 medical emergencies. According to the same website, there was an average of 47 people in the city who die each year from residential fire deaths.

The above map shows, by Census tract data, where Detroit EMS assisted burn victims, and the frequency at which they assisted, from January 10, 2010 to August 26, 2012. During this period, there were 1,075 burn calls throughout the city. While much of the City of Detroit was in the mid to low range (2-5 calls per Census tract) for the frequency of burn calls, there were several pockets that had high numbers of EMS calls, according to the legend. The dark green areas have the highest frequency of calls; these areas range from 9 to 12 calls. For the highest frequency areas there is no trend associated with where they are located in the city; there were 11 Census tract locations in the high frequency range. There was however a diagonal string of Census tract areas in the central/ south-central area of the city that had between 6 and 9 EMS burn calls from January 2010 to August 2012.

There were 21 Census tract locations where zero burn related calls were made to the Detroit EMS in this time frame; some of these locations include Palmer Park, Rouge Golf Course, Eliza Howell Park, and Belle Isle; all of which are parks/recreation areas in the city.

This map provides a different picture on where Detroit EMS responded to burn related situations. As mentioned above there is no trend to where the high frequency areas are located in the city, and areas with between 2 to 5 calls seemed to dominate the city.

The above seven maps are a breakdown of the EMS burn calls,  by dispatcher-assigned category, within the City of Detroit. Of the 1,075 total burn calls during this time, 394 were categorized as related to structure fires. The second highest frequency category was small burn related calls.

There were 15 calls to Detroit EMS between January 1, 2010 to August 26, 2012 for burns related to electrical fires, 35 calls related to a person having burns and difficulty breathing, and 56 where a person was burned and not alert. There were far fewer EMS calls in those three categories than EMS calls related to burns and structure fires (394), small burns (262) and children (94) and adults (219) with burns that covered a certain portion of their body.

When the total number of burn related calls were broken down in the seven categories the maps showed there were no clear geographic trends of concentration in certain areas of the city, per category.