Fewer fires reported, more emergency medical calls made in Singapore in 2015: SCDF
SINGAPORE: Fewer fires were reported in Singapore last year, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) announced at a press conference on Thursday afternoon (Feb 18).
The SCDF responded to 4,604 fire calls last year, down 2.5 per cent from 2014.
Dropped light cases, involving ignition sources such as cigarette butts, remained the highest contributing cause of fires, accounting for 54.9 per cent of all fires in 2015. Rubbish fires continued to form the bulk of fires at residential premises at 53.3 per cent of 2,898 reported incidents.
To remind the public of fire hazards, SCDF has been stepping up fire safety enforcement checks. A total of 16,165 fire safety checks were carried out last year, an increase of 16.3 per cent from the previous year.
MORE EMERGENCY CALLS MADE IN 2015
More Emergency Medical Services (EMS) calls were also made last year, continuing an upward trend over the last five years. This was an increase of 10,072 calls compared with 2014, up 6.5 per cent.
The number of EMS calls have increased steadily over the last five years as Singapore's population ages. To cope with this, the SCDF will adopt a data-driven, tiered and differentiated frontline response model to optimise its limited resources to respond more effectively to critical cases.
Despite the increase in the volume of calls, the SCDF responded to 84.3 per cent of cases within 11 minutes, a 1.8 per cent improvement from 2014.
Mobile applications such as SCDF's myResponder app could help with this, tapping on the general public to help save lives.
- CNA/dl