Fall - 2004
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Protecting Crews During Wildfires
Sprinkler Tests in Dormitories
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Are U.S. Fire Hydrants Standardized?
Roof Sprinklers Protect Homes from Wildfires
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Predicting Risk at the Wildland-Urban
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Aerial Wildfire Suppression... How Good Is It?
First Editor of FIRE.GOV Says Farewell
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How can the vehicles used in wildfires better protect the firefighters that use them? Indeed, this is a perplexing problem. Thousands of wildland firefighters each year face severe wildfire environments that include smoke, noise and chemical conditions, as well as physiological and psychological stress for the firefighter.
To address this question, and to develop vehicle crew protection systems for the safety of firefighters during wildfire suppression, Dave Nichols and his CFA (County Fire Authority), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (RFS) commissioned CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) scientists to evaluate fire tanker vehicle crew protection during burnover using a large gas-fired wildfire burnover simulator.
The evaluation resulted in the development and implementation of a prototype vehicle crew protection system involving radiant heat curtains and water spray systems.
Next, the Bushfire Cooperation Research Centre (CRC) scientists joined CFA, RFS and CSIRO in conducting two large scale fire tests in Tumbatumba, New South Wales, to validate the vehicle crew protection system findings from the wildfire burner simulator tests.
The burnover simulator fire tests subjected the vehicle crew protection systems to multiple levels of temperatures and fire durations simulating low to moderate fire line intensity fires from 2.5 MW/m to 10 MW/m. The fire tests provided results for two levels of radiant temperature and flame duration exposure on the prototype crew protection system in the controlled wildfire.
Some of the conclusions were: Radiant heat curtains are effective in reducing inside cabin and crew radiant heat and high temperatures; well designed water spray systems will provide useful gains in firefighter safety in moderate wildfire intensity.
A report on this study, “Hazards in the Workplace—Fire Crew Protection”, was presented at the 1st Bushfire CRC Conference . For more information, contact Dave Nichols by e-mail at d.nichols@cfa.vic.gov.au.
Bunover Simulator Fire Tests Crew Protection Systems.
Many parents worry about their children’s safety when they leave home to pursue an education. In fact, in the United States each year about 1,300 fires occur in school and college dormitories and a majority of these buildings do not have sprinklers. How fire safe are the dormitories where many students live? To address this question, the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) has an initiative to improve fire safety in college housing. As part of the
initiative, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted two series of full-scale fire tests in abandoned dormitory buildings.
The objective of the study was to compare the levels of hazard created by room fires in a dormitory building with and without automatic fire sprinklers in the room of fire origin.
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Room Fire Experiments Demonstrate Impact of Automatic Sprinklers.