Friday, July 18, 2008
Use Your Noodle Before You Use Your Nozzle
Chief Donald Loeb (Ret.), Contributing Editor
Safety's New Horizon
America's wildland fire management has high stakes these days. No one knows that better than Jerry T. Williams, director of Fire & Aviation Management...
Grain Drain
By Ted Halpin
Many of the structures on farms have qualities that would cause them to meet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration standard as a confined...
Blazes Teach Greater Thought Strategy
To view the full report go to www.wildfirelessons.net/ICTs.htm. Some of the lessons learned regarding strategy and tactics as described by the interviewees...
Air Tanker Grounding May Be Temporary
As many as eight of 33 large air tankers grounded in early May could be restored to service and used to fight forest fires this summer if the Federal...
IAFC Urges Agencies to Go On the Defensive
With climatologists predicting above-normal wildland fire risk across much of the United States this year, the International Association of Fire Chiefs...
Calculated Risk
By Dominic Colletti & Larry Davis
Why does the fire service today, more than ever before, need to perform live-fire training using acquired structures? According to a May 2003 USFA report,...
Structural Knowledge Necessary at Wildfires
[ John Linstrom ]
During the recent California firestorms, structure protection was the priority for all firefighting agencies. In more than 80% of all fire departments...
Forest Act Hasn't Restored Fire Managers' Faith
Dick Mangan
I'm writing this, my first column as president of the IAWF Board of Directors, from a hotel room in Reno, Nev. We've just completed Wildland Fire 2004...
Regime Change
By Ayn J. Shlisky, Landscape Ecologist The Nature Conservancy, Fire Initiative Boulder, Colo. and We
Course-scale fire regime condition class data represent a significant leap forward in the integration and mapping of vegetation and fuel data....
USDA Provides $150M for California Recovery
Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced that $150 million will be provided to help Southern California wildfire recovery efforts and to address...
FROM THE FRONT SEAT
By Bob Pressler
After an uneventful day tour, the fire station had quieted down for the night. The house chores had been completed and the apparatus had been refueled...
Grassy Knowns
By Greg Harry, Wildfire Instructor Emergency Service Training Unit Swinburne University, Victoria, A
If bushfires are the lumbering dinosaur of fires, at times barely moving and at other times at rates of spread around 6kph, then grassfires are the terriers,...
Building Code Changes Equal Same Old Song
[ Ronny J. Coleman ]
As you look at the cavalcade of events that have affected the fire service over the last century, there have been certain events that have catapulted...
Tall TROUBLE
By Ted Halpin
Agricultural structures account for much of what we envision as an idyllic farm scene. In fact, it's almost impossible to picture a farmhouse without...
Storm-Chasing Radar Now After Wildfires
By Douglas Page
When he isn't raising a little dust of his own barreling down some Prairie back road trying to outstrip a Sooner wind, storm chaser Josh Wurman can sometimes...
Dispatcher-in-Sky Looks for Wildfires
By Douglas Page
A new satellite system may allow firefighters to roll sooner on new forest fires. The system, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,...
Strategic SOPs Are Needed for Collisions
[Lawrence Bennett]
On Saturday morning, March 9, 2002, I was in my law office as a rainstorm blew through with very high winds. My fire pager went off for an alarm drop,...
Look to the Skies to Improve Delivery
[Bruce Evans]
Why not use the same kind of system that the aviation industry has used for more than 25 years to reduce pilot error and accidents in the skies to reduce...
No molehill tasks at mountain blaze
Darryl Dutton
While flying into Missoula, we witnessed numerous fires around the area, including several large headers, which provided a very rough ride into Missoula....
Practical Outcomes
By Denis O'Bryan, Director Red Eagle Wildland Protection Services Melbourne, Australia
Alan McArthur did a mountain of research, but only his summarized findings are available. I re-examined these findings and attempted to trace his logic...
Code Enforcer
As the CEO of the ICC, James Lee Witt believes in the importance of building codes to ensure the safety of the public....
Lobby calls for EU funds to fight forest fires
The European Commission should make sure that there is enough union funding available to help pick up the pieces after devastating forest fires like those...
Behind closed doors
By Lt. Bob Pressler (Ret.), Fire Department of New York
Proper size-up starts with a knowledge of the fire buidling’s construction and continues until the last apparatus leave the scene....
Help in a Heartbeat
By Asst. Chief August F. Ghio, San Diego Fire and Rescue
Public-access defibrillation gains ground in San Diego, saving the lives of those who suffer sudden cardiac arrest....
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