Preconference Schedule Kicks Off Firehouse World 2018
Firehouse World, the West Coast’s largest fire service event, includes an outstanding educational lineup featuring some of the most respected and accomplished instructors from around the world. The theme for 2018 is New Challenges – Same Priorities, underscoring the fire service’s unwavering commitment to our ever-present priorities—life safety, incident stabilization and property preservation. The educational lineup features a host of sessions focused on these topics and the skills that every firefighter must understand and master.
Get an early start by attending some of these informative preconference sessions on Monday, March 5:
Victories Do Not Come By Accident (Tactical Resiliency Training)
In this interactive class, Ric Jorge, a 24-year veteran of Palm Beach County, FL, Fire Rescue, will explain the tried and vetted methodology of success-based training founded in sports psychology and used by the military and law enforcement. This training is based on a very simple premise: Mindset, Emotion, Biology and Performance. A thread will be weaved to tie everything together during the lecture.
Box Alarms for Behavioral Health
Utilizing the familiar concept of alarm assignments, David Wiklanski, a firefighter/EMT with the New Brunswick, NJ, Fire Department, will teach participants a series of skills to address and mitigate potential behavioral health issues. These skills will be taught on four levels: Individual (to help the participant); Task Group/Company (team perspective); Organizational (department level) and Macro/Regulatory (to address issues such as funding of behavioral health programs).
Kill the Flashover: Deconstructing the Fire Tetrahedron for the Modern Firefighter
Joe Starnes and Warren Whitley of the Kill the Flashover Project will deconstruct the fire tetrahedron to examine different ways to decay a fire using tactics based on science. These tactics affect one or more parts of the fire tetrahedron (oxygen, fuel, heat or the chemical chain reaction). The class will use lectures, videos and case studies to teach attendees these tactics and to make safer decisions on the fireground.
Building Construction from the Ground
Take a stroll around San Diego's historic Gaslamp Quarter with John Fisher and Lane Woolery, two of San Diego’s senior battalion chiefs. Buildings in the Gaslamp vary in age from the Victorian era to brand new. The discussion will focus mainly on the varied building construction, but will also include strategic and tactical considerations based on real-life incidents and history.
Ignite Learning with Fire Behavior Models
Designed for training or company officers who have the responsibility to teach fire behavior and live-fire training, this class examines critical fire behavior concepts such as temperature vs. energy, burning regime (ventilation controlled vs. fuel controlled), flow paths, flammability limits/range, flashover and backdraft. Instructors James Mendoza and Ted Vandenberg will use six small-scale, live-fire interactive models to cover over 20 major fire behavior science concepts.
To register for the sessions, visit FirehouseWorld.com.
NFPA Offers Winter Safety Tips
Winter storms can be brutal, but they don’t have to be fatal. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has a winter storm tip sheet available for firefighters to download and pass out to the community. “Fire Safety during Winter Storms” offers 10 tips to keep residents’ homes and families safe.
Tips include:
- Generators should be used outdoors. Keep them away from windows and doors. Do not run a generator inside your garage, even if the door is open.
- Stay away from downed wires. Report any downed wires to authorities.
- Be ready if the heat stops working. Use extra layers of clothes and blankets to stay warm. If you use an emergency heat source, keep anything that can burn at least 3 feet away.
- Turn portable heaters off when you leave the room. Turn them off when you go to bed.
To download the tip sheet, visit nfpa.org.
LAFD Female Recruit Earns Top Honors
Caroline Carpenter of Long Beach, CA, became the first woman to earn honors as top recruit and class leader during graduation ceremonies for 52 Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) recruits at the Valley Recruit Training Academy 81.
“I’m small, but I’ve got a big heart,” Carpenter told the Los Angeles Daily News.
Top-recruit status means Carpenter earned the highest overall combined score in tests that include ladder, hose and academic assessments. She was also selected to serve as class leader for her fellow graduates.
Carpenter and her peers completed a 20-week training curriculum. The graduation ceremony was followed by a skills demonstration from the class' 49 men and three women.
Carpenter, a single mom, told the newspaper, “It’s definitely an honor, but I’m just a recruit like anyone else.”
Marion Icon Bud Simpson Dies
Vinson Raleigh (Bud) Simpson, Jr., former owner of Marion Body Works, died at his home in Green Valley, AZ, on Jan. 1, after a short illness. He was 89.
Simpson was the third owner of the Marion Body Works since it was founded in 1905 in Marion, WI. Members of his family continue to own and operate the company that started in a blacksmith shop building horse-drawn carriages. Today, it is a manufacturer of all-aluminum rescue apparatus and pumpers with capacities to build aerial trucks and specialized vehicles.
Simpson bought Marion Body Works in October 1980. By the early-1980s, the company discontinued its steel fire apparatus line entirely to concentrate on all-aluminum apparatus. Simpson did his thesis at MIT on galvanic corrosion, so he knew a bit about building bodies with aluminum. He used his expertise and introduced Mylar tapes, nylon bushings and other isolating mediums to prevent corrosion on the products his company built.
Under Simpson’s direction. Marion Body Works grew 20-fold until 2003 when he retired and Marion continued under the direction of his family members. The company has diversified into five distinct markets and has sustained the business into Marion’s 113th year of continuous operation.
Simpson is survived by his wife Brenda Hait, a daughter and two sons, a step-daughter and many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, siblings and nieces and nephews.
For more on the career of Bud Simpson, read the full articles at firehouse.com/12389661.
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