Fire Industry News for November 2021

In 2003, Jeffrey Energy Center (JEC), the largest coal-fired plant in Kansas, was recognized by the Powder River Basin (PRB) Coal User’s Group as its PRB Plant of the Year. Industry recognition was achieved through plant safety, plant performance, environmental achievements, and overall plant cleanliness. Over the years JEC has undertaken several projects and process changes to further improve the plant. Enhancements to the fire detection and suppression systems have been a vital part of...

Liberty University, located in Lynchburg, VA, is committed to providing quality education within a Christian environment. They are proud to represent more than 15,000 students from all fifty states and over seventy countries around the world. Their campus spans over 5,000 acres making it the largest evangelical higher educational facility in the United States. Because of the size of the property, the campus employs its emergency response team, responsible for monitoring over 80 buildings for fi...

In the spring of 2005, the Central Jackson County Fire Protection District (CJCFPD) updated the dispatching system at its Adams Dairy Parkway location in Blue Springs, Missouri. The updates included creating a state-of-the-art 911 call center complete with a sophisticated computer, CAD network, and emergency response equipment. Mindful of the necessity to protect the high-value, new equipment, and its important service to the community, CJCFPD called on a long-term partner, Fike Corporation, an...

The new Mystique Community Ice Center opened its doors in Dubuque, Iowa just in time to meet the chill that’s in the air. Home to the United States Hockey League’s expansion team, the Fighting Saints, the 3,200 seat arena is dedicated to all things ice. Since the Ice Center, like any sporting venue, may contain large amounts of people at any given time, the Local Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) required a voice evacuation system to be included in the overall life safety solution...

Has the advent of “cloud computing” reduced the need for automatic fire suppression systems in data centers? There have been many discussions in the Information Technology, Telecom, and Fire Suppression industries recently regarding this topic. With data stored and backed up in multiple, different physical locations, one line of thinking says there is less need for an automatic fire suppression system. A fire or other catastrophic event, at worst, results in the loss of relatively i...

Wharton Esherick (1878-1970) was an artist who produced paintings, decorative frames, woodcuts, sculptures, and furniture. While Esherick’s work is displayed in major American museums and private collections, a large compilation of his work is found in his studio. His studio has been preserved and maintained since his death, enabling visitors to learn more about the artist’s life as well as view his work. With so many valuable artifacts and artwork in one studio, a superior fire pro...

Southern Supply Company is a wholesale distributor located in Springfield, Missouri. Southern Supply has a critical data center through which it handles all of its business activity, from shipping and receiving to accounting, for its 12 locations in Missouri and Kansas. Because it is key to the operation of its business, Southern Supply decided to protect its data center with a clean agent fire suppression system, rather than just a traditional sprinkler system. By choosing a clean-ag...

On the evening of April 3, 2009, a financial institution located in downtown Chicago was protected from the possibility of a large fire. Earlier that evening, an electrical component in the self-contained air conditioning unit had overheated and caught fire. The AC unit was located near highly sensitive equipment in a computer room. Fortunately, the computer room was protected with a Fike clean agent suppression system, using the gaseous chemical suppressant, DuPont™ FM-200® — d...

Clean agents include both chemical agents (3M™ Novec™ 1230 Fire Protection Fluid, FM-200, ECARO-25®) and inert gases (PROINERT®), all of which are ideal for protecting servers, electronics, artwork, archives, and more. They produce none of the collateral damage often associated with sprinkler systems. Best of all, they are safe for people and the environment. Clean Agent Suppression Benefits Additional benefits that clean agent suppression systems have...

The Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise (LITE)™ in Lafayette, LA is a state-of-the-art 3D immersive visualization resource center featuring one of the world’s first six-sided, digital virtual reality cubes, as well as the world’s largest digital 3-D theatre. This leading-edge visualization environment is powered by one of the largest shared memory resources in the world, a 4.1TB of RAM high-performance computing system. The LITE facility, a State entity governed by a B...

San Carlos, CA, located midway between San Francisco and San Jose, has been a magnet for families, due in large part to the small size and high educational value the San Carlos School District offers. To maintain this standard, the district has undertaken a large facility modernization project, affecting multiple schools. To continue the project throughout the school year, the district set up temporary housing for displaced classrooms, creating a unique and immediate need for stand-alone fire a...

False fire alarms have risen by 20 per cent in just three years at NHS Trusts across England; stretching resources, unsettling patients and disrupting vital care. Figures from NHS Digital reveal there were 20,126 false fire alarms at NHS Trusts in England throughout 2017/18, compared with 16,847 in 2015/16 and 19,777 in 2016/17 – one Trust alone recorded upwards of 500 false alarms. Disrupting important care The worrying figures show that a number of patient’s sustained ‘inj...

More than 3,000 false fire alarms were maliciously triggered across England in 2017/18 – disrupting schools and businesses, placing unnecessary strain on our emergency services, and reducing the confidence the general public has in alarms. The latest Home Office figures reveal that; there were a total of 3,029 false alarms caused by a ‘malicious activation of fire call point/alarm’ in England for the period July 1 2017 to June 30, 2018, an increase of 160 on the previous...

Wastewater treatment plant operators, having to deal with persistent clogs in pumps and check valves due to disposable wipes and other non-dispersible debris, have had limited options for solutions that can be implemented within narrow and deep-channel influent pump station wet wells. Zerbe Township, Pennsylvania, is one of a growing number of WWTP operations that have successfully managed this problem by installing Gorman-Rupp Super T Series® self-priming pumps, upgraded with an innovative...