This month on Fire Marshal's Corner host Ed Comeau looks at the landmark Vision 20/20 efforts.
Ed talks with project manager Jim Crawford, fire marshal for Vancouver, WA. Jim has been the driving force behind the project from its genesis in 2006 when he brought together an informal group of noted national experts in Florida. From this beginning, Vision 20/20 has grown to the point where it is an important part of helping to develop a national strategic agenda for fire and loss prevention.
This month on Fire Marshal's Corner host Ed Comeau looks at the landmark Vision 20/20 efforts.
Ed talks with project manager Jim Crawford, fire marshal for Vancouver, WA. Jim has been the driving force behind the project from its genesis in 2006 when he brought together an informal group of noted national experts in Florida. From this beginning, Vision 20/20 has grown to the point where it is an important part of helping to develop a national strategic agenda for fire and loss prevention.
This month on Fire Marshal's Corner, host Ed Comeau focuses on the growing issue of efforts to remove the requirements for residential sprinklers, that were put into the International Residential Code, at the state level. A number of bills have been introduced in state legislatures and the fire service is rising to the cause and working hard to make sure that profits are not coming ahead of public and firefighter safety.
Last month will be remembered as the most deadly in years. Statistics compiled by Ed Comeau show a dramatic increase in significant multiple-fatality fires, compared to 2007 and 2008.
In January, 82 people died in these tragic blazes. Of those, 62 percent were children.
Comeau has compiled detailed statistics, including spreadsheets and maps of the incidents on his Significant Multiple-Fatality Fires blog.
This month on Fire Marshal's Corner, host Ed Comeau launches the first of a regular series of interviews about the groundbreaking project, Vision 20/20. This project, funded by a DHS Fire Prevention and Safety Grant, is developing a national strategic agenda for fire loss prevention. For over a year, experts from across the country have been working on this project collaboratively on developing a series of strategies and the final result has been five that focus on areas that need attention.
This month on Fire Marshal's Corner, host Ed Comeau looks at three very timely topics starting with Fire Prevention Week. Four fire prevention experts from across the nation took time to talk about the creative programs they are doing to help educate the public and make them aware of what they can do to protect themselves. Featured are Judy Comoletti from NFPA, Wanda Willis of the Harrisonburg, VA, Fire Department, Monica Colby of the Utah State Fire Marshal's Office and Jennifer Mieth from the Massachusetts State Fire Marshal's Office.
This month's edition of Fire Marshal's Corner takes us back to the issue of photoelectric versus ionization smoke alarms. Since last month's show, quite a bit has happened and we need to bring people up-to-date.
Smoke alarms have an unquestioned role in reducing the loss of life and injuries from fire. However, recent information is coming to light about how the two predominant types of smoke alarms, photoelectric and ionization, react to different fire scenarios. Television stations across the country are conducting demonstration burns to measure the response time of the different smoke alarms with some troubling results.
This month's show focuses on a particularly troubling issue: catastrophic, multiple-fatality fires, where three or more people are killed per incident. By tracking these fires through several sources, for 2007 there were 113 incidents killing 431, 54 percent of them children. While these are occurring across the nation, there are definitely more of them in the eastern half of the country with a heavy concentration in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. You can see the distribution in an online map and spreadsheet.
A panel of experts joins host Ed Comeau to take a closer look at the problem. Senior Planning and Research Analyst Richard Taylor with the Maine State Fire Marshal's Office who provides a detailed, analytical look at the information that has been gathered for 2007. Unfortunately, a number of these incidents have occurred in Maryland, and particularly in Montgomery County, so giving us a state fire marshal's perspective is Maryland State Fire Marshal Bill Barnard and Montgomery County Fire Marshal Mike Love talks about it from the local level. We wrap up the show with some ideas about resources from Branch Chief Ken Farmer of the Leadership and Prevention Branch of the U.S. Fire Administration.
This month on Fire Marshal's Corner, host Ed Comeau goes international again! First, however, we're starting on this side of the Atlantic with a segment from the National Association of State Fire Marshal's featuring New Hampshire Fire Marshal Bill Degnan. Marshal Degnan will be covering alternative heating fire safety, which is a very timely topic as we move into the winter season here in the United States.
