For residential occupancy, what is the casualty estimate per bedroom?

• A. 1
• B. 2
• C. 3
• D. 4

Answer: (B)

Casualty estimates are a planning tool used in US&R to size up the incident and allocate resources. For residential occupancy, the standard starting point is two casualties per bedroom. This reflects typical sleeping arrangements in homes, where a bedroom often houses two occupants, and it provides a conservative estimate to ensure enough search teams, air supply, and medical resources are available to locate and reach occupants.

Applying this helps you quickly gauge the scale of potential victims: for example, a home with three bedrooms would be planned for about six casualties, guiding how many search teams and support resources to deploy and how to structure the search priorities. Remember, this is a planning estimate and actual on-scene conditions can adjust the numbers, but two per bedroom is the baseline for residential settings.