Fire

  • First response“Live burns” to benefit research and firefighter training

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    Fire researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and colleagues from fire service organizations will turn abandoned wood-frame, single-family houses near the site of an old Spartanburg, South Carolina, textile mill into proving and training grounds for new science-driven fire-fighting techniques. The objective of the study is to improve firefighter safety and effectiveness.

  • Fire fightingUsing cold plasma to fight fires

    Traditional fire-suppression technologies focus largely on disrupting the chemical reactions involved in combustion; from a physics perspective, however, flames are cold plasmas; DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, theorized that by using physics techniques rather than combustion chemistry, it might be possible to manipulate and extinguish flames

  • First responseFDNY conducts live fire tests to test improvements in fire department tactics

    In the name of science, but with aim of saving lives, preventing injuries, and reducing property losses, members of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) spent much of the first two weeks in July setting fire to twenty abandoned townhouses on Governors Island, about a kilometer from the southern tip of Manhattan

  • DisastersSome flame retardants make fires more lethal

    Almost 10,000 deaths from fires occur in industrialized countries worldwide each year, including about 3,500 in the United States; scientists find that widely used flame retardants added to carpets, furniture upholstery, plastics, crib mattresses, car, and airline seats and other products to suppress the visible flames in fires are actually increasing the danger of invisible toxic gases that are the No. 1 cause of death in fires

  • Fire regulationsN.Y. senator pushes to streamline industrial fire regulations

    Last week Senator Charles Schumer (D – New York) urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make it easier for first responders to contain industrial fires at chemical facilities by streamlining the agency’s reporting process