Fire Marshal's Corner: The Impact of 'Going Green" on Life Safety and Construction

Dec. 9, 2009

This month on Fire Marshal's Corner we're welcoming Mike Love as a regular co-host to the show. Mike is the fire marshal for Montgomery County, MD, Fire and Rescue and has a long career in the fire service on both the local and national level. He is the founder of the invaluable communications tool, EPARADE, which has about 900 members. Welcome Mike.

There is a lot of ground to cover, starting with Ken LaSala from the International Association of Fire Chiefs giving an update on the passage of the FIRE and SAFER grant reauthorization in the U.S. House of Representatives. This was a major milestone for this legislation and there were some significant changes made in the programs that Ken talks about in this interview.

Next, a discussion on the growing field of fire safety and the environment with Bob Davidson who is representing the National Association of State Fire Marshals on the International Green Construction Code (IFCC) project and Dom Kasmauskas from the National Fire Sprinkler Association who is doing a lot of work in the area. The IGCC is a new model building code that will provide for communities to have a standard code that can be used in building sustainable buildings, but there are some significant fire safety concerns that also need to be addressed. Dom also talks about the recent full-scale tests that were done at FM Global to measure the impact of fire on the environment.

The show wraps up with Vision 20/20 Project Manager Jim Crawford providing a comprehensive update of the project. There has been a significant amount of progress in this project along with several new grants that are helping to move the strategies forward.

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