Mapping isn’t just analysis—it’s accountability. Every gradient on a map is a story of who gets protected and who gets forgotten.
It starts with a number. Then another. Then a table full of them.
And before you know it, those numbers stop being abstract. They become names you’ll never read, faces you’ll never meet, and addresses that burned down long before the fire truck made the turn.
For our midterm in Principles of GIS, we were tasked to make those numbers speak. We used data from the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA)—the same dataset the federal government quietly posts each year, listing how many people die in fires in every U.S. state. It’s not dramatic data. No headlines. Just the arithmetic of loss, waiting for someone to notice.
So I built two maps.
The first shows the fire death rate per million residents—a blunt statistic of how often tragedy strikes.
The second shows the relative risk of dying in a fire—a comparison of each state’s mortality rate against the national average.
Together, they form a picture that is less about fire and more about the fragility of safety.
Then I sat back and watched America light up in colors no one should be proud of.
Where the Flames Burn Brighter
The South burns harder, and not just in metaphor.
Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas—their names repeat like a chant from some forgotten public safety report. On the map, they glow dark red. Their relative risk scores sit well above 1.0, meaning residents there are twice as likely to die in a fire as the average American.
This isn’t bad luck. It’s infrastructure—or the lack of it.
Old homes with old wiring. Volunteer fire departments running on coffee and community goodwill. Rural counties where a hydrant is a luxury and response time is measured in long minutes. These are the quiet, structural reasons behind the numbers.
Meanwhile, the states everyone loves to mock for being overregulated—California, New York, Massachusetts—appear in calming shades of yellow and blue. Their risk is lower not because they’re richer, but because they enforce the rules. Building codes, sprinkler requirements, mandatory alarms—layers of bureaucracy that seem irritating until the night they save your life.
Sometimes, red tape is just fireproof fabric.
A Geography of Inequality
When I overlaid FEMA’s data with state boundaries from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles in ArcGIS Pro, the resulting map wasn’t random—it was revealing.
You could almost trace poverty lines by color intensity. States with lower incomes, older housing stock, and limited access to emergency services stood out like burn marks on the map.
The relative risk values weren’t just numbers; they were moral coordinates.
A state above 1.0 means that being born there automatically increases your odds of dying in a fire. That’s not geography—that’s inequality mapped to the decimal.
We call it “relative risk.” But let’s be honest—it’s relative neglect.
A bureaucratic way of saying: some lives are still treated as more flammable than others.
The Story Behind the Gradient
Every gradient hides a story.
Behind every color block is a family that didn’t make it out, a neighbor who called too late, a volunteer fire station running short on gear.
GIS can feel clinical—pixels, projections, polygons—but the truth is that every dataset is someone’s aftermath.
When you zoom in on a map like this, you’re not just looking at data; you’re looking at the physical residue of decades of policy, planning, and omission.
And yet, each year the U.S. Fire Administration will quietly update its spreadsheet. FEMA will post the new numbers. The cycle will continue—incremental, statistical, and mostly invisible.
Until someone decides to map it again.
Mapping, I’ve learned, isn’t just about displaying data—it’s about making silence visible.
A Note on Map Scale
I intentionally omitted the map scale because the layout represents a thematic map showing fire death rates and relative risk by state. The focus of this map is on visualizing spatial variation in fire-related risk, not on measuring physical distances or areas. Since the map uses standardized U.S. Census Bureau Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles, the relative shapes and positions of the states remain accurate without requiring a fixed map scale.
The goal, simply put, was to convey disparity—not distance.
Beyond the Classroom
We often treat assignments like this as academic exercises, but this one felt heavier.
There’s a difference between mapping rivers or roads and mapping death. Between learning a software tool and realizing what its layers reveal about how a country works—or doesn’t.
In theory, we live in the same nation. In practice, we live in fifty different fire codes.
Some states have fully staffed departments and strict safety campaigns. Others rely on volunteer firefighters, borrowed equipment, and wishful thinking.
A map like this is humbling. It reminds you that public safety is not a given. It’s a privilege paid for by policy, funding, and enforcement.
The Takeaway
We talk endlessly about AI, cloud computing, and cybersecurity—as if modernity itself will keep us safe. But the real risks often remain analog: aging homes, unattended stoves, broken alarms, stretched budgets.
That’s what this project taught me.
That data can reveal decay. That a map can show not just where fires happen, but where the system quietly fails.
Every polygon in that USA Contiguous Albers Equal Area Conic projection represents both geography and grief. Every color gradient reflects how unevenly safety is distributed across a supposedly united country.
GIS is often described as a tool for analysis. But sometimes, it’s also a form of remembrance.
Because the point of mapping is not only to measure the world—it’s to remind us what we’ve chosen to ignore.
About This Map
Map created by: Teodulfo Espero, MAS-GIT, GIS-512-01: Principles of GIS (Fall 2025)
Coordinate System: USA Contiguous Albers Equal Area Conic
Software: ArcGIS Pro
Data Sources:
- U.S. Fire Administration. (2024, September 17). State Fire Death Risk. Federal Emergency Management Agency.
- U.S. Census Bureau. Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles.
Map Panels:
Relative Risk of Death by Fire in the United States (2023) – Compares each state’s fire death rate to the national average. Values above 1.0 signify higher risk, while lower values indicate greater safety performance.
Rate of Death by Fire in the United States (2023) – Depicts fire-related death rates per million residents, showing spatial disparities in fire safety and emergency response.