United States of America (USA) Fire Industry News

Fire doors are always important, but it can be even more crucial for those who manage buildings with a sleeping risk such as hotels and hospitals. The condition of each door can dramatically impact the performance of the door to hold back, smoke, gasses and fire. Here are some simple things to keep in mind to ensure that the resident’s premises and their occupants remain protected. A fire door is only effective barrier to fire (and possibly smoke) when its shut. prop open fire doors So,...

Hurricane Florence is expected to make landfall along the southern East Coast of the U.S. in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, bringing with it extensive rain and wind, and prompting extensive evacuations. The National Hurricane Center has also issued advisories for other tropical storms and hurricanes, and is asking communities to prepare ahead as these storms move closer to land. Electrical safety tips To help navigate these storms and prepare throughout hurricane season, NFPA enc...

Drones are an important new tool for the fire service and have already proven their ability to save lives. Willingness to embrace drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs]) for fire applications varies widely by department, and it’s not just larger departments that are making the investment. Some smaller departments are investing in drones in a big way, even as some larger departments are reticent. Firefighting Drone Programs Departments may start with a small drone just to “try i...

CNL Software, global provider of Physical Security Information management (PSIM) software, is pleased to announce that it will be demonstrating the latest developments to its IPSecurityCenter PSIM software at GSX. These developments include enhancements that increase performance and help reduce operational response times in distributed, large-scale and mission-critical PSIM deployments. The IPSecurityCenter demonstrations are of interest to those involved in the security of, major cities, gover...

Over three million fire doors are installed every year in the UK, yet incorrect specification, poor installation and a lack of maintenance is still a common occurrence. In light of this, and to coincide with Fire Door Safety Week, ASSA ABLOY UK is holding a dedicated event at West Midlands Fire Service’s headquarters in Birmingham to help raise the bar on standards of quality for fire door safety. The event will take place on Thursday 27th September and is aimed towards building owners, f...

Innovating once again, Hoffman & Lamson will be exhibiting at the Fenasan 2018 trade show, featuring the LAMSON 2400 Multi-Stage Centrifugal Blower, perfect for effluent treatment. Fenasan, the largest Environmental Sanitation Meeting in the Americas, will take place at the Expo Center Norte - São Paulo / SP White Pavilion, September 18-20, 2018, from 1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Specialized technical service Hoffman & Lamson has more than 100,000 machines in operation and is recogni...

Flooding, severe weather, prolonged power cut, heatwave, large smoke plume, chemical leak…how would the users cope in an emergency situation? Cambridgeshire’s emergency services and other Local Resilience Forum (LRF) partners such as local authorities, Cambridgeshire County Council, health organizations, and the Environment Agency, are joining forces for the whole of September to share top tips and advice to help get local residents prepared for a number of different emergency situ...

ShotSpotter-Verizon collaboration expands with ShotSpotter Flex inclusion ShotSpotter, Inc., global company in gunshot detection solutions that help law enforcement officials identify, locate and deter gun violence, announced that Verizon Communications Inc. has expanded its partnership to include reselling ShotSpotter Flex, the company’s flagship gunshot detection solution, as a stand-alone offering to its customers. ShotSpotter, used by more than 90 cities to help figh...

Purchasing a vehicle that checks off all the organization’s needs/wants within the budget can be a challenging and lengthy process. There’s an endless list of customizations and factors to consider. Here are four items to include in the ARFF purchase to obtain the best tools for the mission. ARFF vehicles Built to be durable and safe Bump steer can occur when the vehicle does not have an independent suspension Any ARFF vehicle is built with the mindset of durability and safety. O...

September is Campus Fire Safety Month, and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and The Center for Campus Fire Safety (The Center) are working together to promote their national Campus Fire Safety for Students campaign. The campaign, which raises awareness about the dangers of fires among college-aged students who live in on- and off-campus college housing, serves as an important reminder for students, parents, fire safety professionals, and safety educat...

FirstNet is bringing public safety a much-needed technology upgrade to help them connect to the critical information they need More than 2,500 public safety agencies across the country have joined FirstNet. This is nearly double the number of agencies since the last update in July. FirstNet is the nationwide public safety communications platform dedicated to America's first responders. Being built with AT&T, in public-private partnership with the First Responder Network A...

Emergency Reporting (ER), the cloud-based reporting and records management software solutions provider for Fire and EMS agencies, has teamed up with the National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC), to release a comprehensive guide, which shows fire service leaders how to increase their fire department’s volunteer base. NVFC’s recruitment guide The guide, ‘How to Build a Smart Recruitment Program: Your Guide to Getting More Volunteer Firefighters’, is available for download f...

The Viking Corporation, a pioneer in fire protection and life safety systems, has added a new 5.8 K-factor residential concealed pendent sprinkler to its Freedom® residential product line. Because of its larger K-factor, the Model VK498 delivers the required flows for an NFPA 13 residential system (0.1GPM/FT2) at lower starting pressures. The new glass bulb sprinkler is ideal for mid-to-high rise residential structures, allowing installers to lower their pressure requirements while also usi...

The extent of the passive fire protection remediation work required in England’s social housing stock has been revealed by a new investigation, the findings of which suggest that thousands of families are being exposed to unnecessary risk. A study by Inside Housing magazine analyzed the fire risk assessments for 1,584 residential tower blocks (approximately 40% of the stock of social housing tall buildings) and discovered that major problems with fire doors and compartmentation were widesp...

Checkmate Fire are long-time advocates of the benefits of third-party certification for all passive fire protection and their belief has been further strengthened by the Government’s ongoing investigation into the quality of fire doors. The company believes that all fire doors should be certified by an approved UKAS certification scheme, and it appears that the Government is now moving towards implementing this. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has examine...

The 30th Annual Phoenix World Burn Congress will be held Sept. 12-15, 2018 at the Amway Grand Plaza and DeVos Place Convention Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The World Burn Congress is the largest gathering of the burn community, connecting attendees with support, resources, and each other. This annual international conference unites nearly 1,000 burn survivors, their families, caregivers, burn care professionals, and firefighters for three days of transformational healing. For many, it is t...

Honeywell, a provider of Connected Buildings, is helping customers get ahead of upcoming building code changes and improve fire detection through a new line of addressable smoke and heat detection devices available across all Honeywell Fire brands. The devices improve detection of fires involving synthetic materials that are commonly used in modern buildings, and offer improved system reliability against false alarms. In addition, these devices have been designed to meet new industry requiremen...

Autronica Fire and Security has entered into an agreement with the global energy company Equinor ASA to continue to deliver fire and gas goods and services for at least 6 more years. Autronica Fire and Security AS is a part of UTC Climate, Controls & Security, a unit of United Technologies Corp. Adding upgrades The agreement, which includes options for two 2-year extensions, is in addition to the existing framework agreement supporting both Johan Sverdrup and Johan Castberg fields for deli...

Eleven new on-call firefighters have joined fire stations across Cambridgeshire after completing a three-month training program. The latest group of on-call recruits passed out last month, in front of proud friends, family, and instructors, and are serving their communities as firefighters around their work and home life. The new recruits are now on-call after completing three months of training at the Service’s training center in Huntingdon and will now be joining crews at Ramsey, Hunti...

Free to attend and consisting of nine shows, UK Construction Week 2018 is set to be a show to remember: Timber Expo, Build Show, Civils Expo, Plant & Machinery Live, Energy 2018, Building Tech Live, Surface & Materials Show and HVAC 2018 running from 9-11 October and Grand Designs Live which is open to the trade on 10-11 October. UK Construction Week brings together all stakeholders within the built environment across every facet of design, build and product innovation. As one of the la...

E-ONE, a subsidiary of REV Group and a manufacturer of fire apparatus, announces a new collaboration with the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department. Working with E-ONE to address the issue of exposure to harmful materials and carcinogens contaminating firefighter’s protective gear, the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department has chosen new decontamination options for its five new E-ONE Custom Rescue Pumpers. Promoting A Better Environment For Firefighters A cab compartment over the front wheel-we...

One of three barges from which fireworks were launched at Lake Tahoe’s “Lights on the Lake” celebration – one of the nation’s largest Independence Day fireworks displays in the nation – caught fire in the early morning hours of July 5th following the highly choreographed performance. Lake Assault Marine 24 fireboat Fortunately, the Tahoe Douglas Fire Protection District quickly responded with Marine 24, its new Lake Assault fireboat that was recently placed...

The trial court had ruled that the plaintiff firefighters had failed to produce evidence of an alternative siren design Federal Signal Corporation, a provider of environmental and safety solutions, announced that a Pittsburgh court of appeals issued an opinion affirming the trial court's dismissal of a case filed by seven Pittsburgh firefighter plaintiffs who claimed that the Company's sirens on their fire trucks caused them hearing loss. The trial court had ruled that the pl...

Emergency Reporting (ER), the globally renowned company for easy-to-use cloud-based reporting and records management software solutions for Fire and EMS (Emergency Medical Services) agencies, has announced a partnership with Fire Recovery USA, the global company in Fire and EMS Billing services. The Emergency Reporting and Fire Recovery USA partnership will help fire department operations to maximize their cost-recovery efforts, for incident-related responses, as well as fire prevention and als...

POK S.A.S, the globally renowned fire safety equipment provider, who is in constant search to create innovative products, has designed a new generation of robotic monitor, the Jupiter. Designed to fight fire effectively as close as possible to the source, this remote-controlled system allows fire brigades to operate in complete safety and with high efficiency. The Jupiter The Jupiter is the latest generation robot, which is extremely user-friendly and operational in all environments Ideal for...

Nittan Europe announce the publishing of Technical Guidance Sheets (TGS) No. 21, 22 and 23. The summary of each document is below. TGS-21 Issues Concerning HYBRID BS 5839 Part1 & Part6 Systems in HMOs. TGS-21 addresses growing concerns surrounding the installation of fire safety systems in House of Multiple Occupation (HMOs). In recent years, there has been a tendency for system designers to advise landlords and building owners to specify ‘hybrid’ systems – installing...

Often in the workplace, be it emergency response, industrial, or any other field, the professionals are called upon to do everything with, obviously, safety in mind. The hazardous material handling and response industry is no exception to this ideology. From responding to incidents, to the weekly trainings, safety must be the #1 thing in the safety trainers’ minds when suiting up and heading out. Here are a few essential tips for the safety trainers to go through their laborious day: Oth...

Three-and-a-half years on from a destructive fire, which engulfed a plastics manufacturer’s factory with no sprinkler system, in Lancashire, United Kingdom, the lasting effect is undeniable, as the £50 million turn-over business has gone into administration cost cuts, with the loss of 200 jobs. Total Polyfilm site fire The fire at the Total Polyfilm site, located in Bamber Bridge, on May 10, 2016, took 60 firefighters to control and resulted in the total loss of the factory. Nearby...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (USFS) announced a new strategy for managing catastrophic wildfires and the impacts of invasive species, drought, and insect and disease epidemics. Specifically, a new report titled Toward Shared Stewardship across Landscapes: An Outcome-based investment Strategy outlines the USFS’s plans to work more closely with states to identify landscape-scale priorities for targeted treatments in areas with the highest payoffs. Reducing The S...

The legislative Regulation Review Committee in Connecticut has formally approved new safety codes, including a State Building Code, Fire Safety Code and Fire Prevention Code that will fall short of nationally recognized standards and fire safety requirements. The Connecticut codes all go into effect by October 2018, but none will include requirements for fire sprinklers that are part of nationally recognized safety codes – including the International Residential Code and the Life Safety Co...