Urban Fire as an Unstabilized Parasite: The 1976–1978 Outbreak in Bushwick, Brooklyn

Fire service cuts recommended by the Rand Corporation, and largely implemented before New York City's ‘fiscal crisis’, are known to have initiated a geographically spreading, temporally recurrent fire epidemic. Examination of a resulting fire outbreak in Brooklyn's Bushwick section shows the epidemic to have temporal and spatial ‘patchiness' characteristics of a parasite infestation, as well as an apparent composite ‘life cycle’, but without the stabilizing mechanisms which assure the survival both of host and of parasite populations. The composite fire ‘life cycle’ implies the need for a multiple factor eradication program, in which improvements in fire service play a key role, both for extinguishment and for prevention purposes.