Fire Safety Week 2020 - WEBINAR #1: Vulnerable people and fire safety

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WEBINAR #1: Tuesday November 17th – 10h00-11h30 (CET)

Vulnerable people and fire safety

In Europe, there is a growing vulnerable community. In 2018, nearly 20% of the EU’s population was aged 65 or over . Moreover, life expectancy at birth is expected to increase 7.8 years for males and 6.6 years for females in the coming 50 years. This means that the EU is “turning increasingly grey” in the coming decades. Partially because the population is getting older, the number of Europeans with disabilities is also rising significantly. As a result, expectations are that this year there will be approximately 120 million Europeans with a disability . As such, the group of vulnerable people is getting increasingly bigger.

When looking at which vulnerable groups are expected to grow the most in the coming years, and combining this with the opinion of the fire safety experts, it can be concluded that three main risk groups should receive the most attention in the coming years. These are the elderly (65+) living at home, (other) people with a mental or physical disability living at home, and children. We owe it to these vulnerable groups of citizens to provide them with a certain level of fire safety in their residential environment. One that does not allow these people to be at a significantly higher risk of being involved in a fire, or being at a higher risk of suffering the consequences of a fire.

The objective of this webinar is:

to discuss how we can establish an European approach of improving the fire safety of the vulnerable community and the most vulnerable groups? What does research really say? What is the perspective of Fire Service professionals? And how can the EU help?

Programme and presentations (PDF)

This webinar is part of the European Fire Safety Week 2020 and was organised by the European Fire Safety Alliance.