Reruns of Rescue Me and EMERGENCY! might be satisfactory for some firefighter fans, but what if a new series would air about the Chicago Fire Department with the quality of Law and Order? NBC has approved a such a pilot, Chicago Fire, produced by Dick Wolf and reported to be an action drama showing the lives of the men and women of the Chicago Fire Department. Writers Derek Haas and Michael Brandt (both of 3:10 to Yuma fame, starring Russell Crowe) are also working on the project.
Firefighters Give Support Dog To Kid In Need FOX2now.com So when the department heard Zach had spent the past year and a half trying to get a service dog, Creve Coeur's firefighters raced to his rescue again, volunteering to pay all the costs from their own pockets. On Monday, at the offices of Support Dogs ... See all stories on this topic »
Horse drawn chemical truck, San Luis Obispo firefighters in 1906 ... By David Middlecamp CHEMICAL TRUCK — The latest thing in fire fighting equipment — in 1906, that is—is pictured here in a photo which was presented to the San Luis Obispo fire department by Mrs. Callie M. John in 1948. The gallant volunteers in uniform are as follows: Top row, left to right—Charles ... art firefighting in San Luis Obispo until 1916 when petrol would replace equine power. This photo was made a year after one of the worst fires in history struck downtown, destroying a whole city block.
Fireground Search: How Do you Know? FireEngineering.com By Jerry Knapp Firefighters take house fires for granted, but I'm not sure why. House and residential fires in America account for a death rate (on average) of one every three hours or about eight per day. Residential fires account of an annual loss of ... See all stories on this topic »
Burning Questions - Chicago Sun-Times While hall fixtures and furniture were destroyed, firefighters managed to save most of the structure itself. Schuette would go on to shepherd reconstruction and modernization of the school at a cost of $30000, according to a parish publication. ... See all stories on this topic »
Unless you’re scanning the web for this kind of information, you’re probably not aware that on a fairly regular basis huge trucks with no driver inside the cab roll away from where they were parked. This usually happens because the driver neglected to engage the parking brake or because someone either purposely or inadvertently released it. The so-called rollaway accidents that result are often both costly and deadly. In April, a tractor trailer rolled across 10 lanes of expressway traffic in Columbus, GA and plowed through a store, causing $200,000 in damage. In 2006, an eight year-old girl was killed in New York City after being pinned on the sidewalk by a runaway school bus. Witnesses saw an eight year-old boy entering the empty bus prior to the tragic accident.
Now a mechanic with just a year of community college under his belt has unveiled a system to prevent rollaways. 44 year-old Tom Accardi (right) managed to create the system and bring it to market without the help of venture capitalists or companies that prey on aspiring inventors.
Accardi lives in the village of Yaphank, New York in the suburbs of Long Island. He spent close to six years working on his device, which sells for $2,500, and comes with a lifetime guarantee. A patent is pending.
Here’s how it works: less than two seconds after the driver has gotten out of the seat, a sensor in the seat sends a signal to the system’s controller box, which also receives data on the truck’s speed. If the controller detects motion of between 2 and 3 mph, it sends current to a solenoid that has been installed on the supply line to the air brake, cutting off the air. That, in turn, causes the parking brake to kick in.
Accardi parks a truck in the driveway of his home in Yaphank, opens the driver side door, releases the brake and the truck starts rolling in reverse. He sits in the driver seat for a moment with his legs hanging outside the cab, watching the truck roll down the driveway, then quickly climbs out of the moving truck. A second or so after his butt is off the seat, we hear the air brakes hiss and the truck stops rolling. In another segment of the video a truck with the anti-roll away system is seen rolling down a steep suburban street. Then Accardi opens the door and jumps out of the moving truck, which quickly brakes seconds after he is out of the driver’s seat. It’s dramatic stuff.
In the video Accardi makes reference to the personal injuries, deaths, property damage and resulting insurance claims from rollaway accidents and then declares: “The system we have is going to put an end to all of that.”
A self-taught mechanic who says he never had the money to go to mechanics school, Accardi has worked on trucks since he was 15 years old. He worked his way up from mechanic to administrator at Waste Management, the giant private carting firm. While he was there, Accardi says, he got weekly safety updates that indicated between two and five rollaway incidents took place almost every week. In one, a Waste Management employee was crushed to death between two trucks, causing Accardi to remark, “There’s no need for this to happen. I can make something to prevent this.”
When a colleague dared him to go ahead and try, Accardi spent the next two nights in his garage making a tabletop model of his anti-rollaway system. The Craftsman tractor he sat on as he mowed his lawn was something of an inspiration.
“Look at your standard garden tractor,” Accardi said in an interview. “They all have a seat switch so that if you get up out of your seat, it shuts the motor off.”
Which is why he pulled the seat off the lawnmower and attached it to a used beer delivery truck he bought for $5,000 solely for the purpose of perfecting his anti-rollaway system.
Accardi resisted the overtures of a firm that describes itself as America’s leading inventor service company. He says it wanted him to cough up $10,000 before it would help and took months to return one of his calls. He also spent many months doing a dance with venture capitalists, who he says “wanted almost the whole company. If I would have given every VC what they wanted, I’d be working for them for the rest of my life.”
Accardi says he had some promising meetings with the giant auto part manufacturer Delphi but there were personnel changes and no deal was reached. So he reluctantly decided to market the device himself. They key engineering challenge was an electronic one: programming some sort of controller with a microprocessor that would use inputs on the truck’s motion and absence of a driver to make the air brakes go on.
“Everybody wanted large amounts of money to do engineering before they got involved and did anything,” Accardi recalls.
Initially he was told there would be between $200,000 and $500,000 in engineering costs to launch the business. But eventually Accardi found a firm called Electro Motive Designs on Long Island. The firm does work turning garbage trucks and buses into hybrids, so Accardi’s project was right up their alley. Instead of a six figure tab for programming the controller box, Accardi paid Electro Motive Designs in the low five figures.
“They told me they would hack right into the truck’s computer, and then bing, bang, boom, they did everything we wanted,” Accardi recalls.”They had already done the hard work on their previous jobs.”
Dana Demeo, Electro Motive Designs’ VP of Engineering, says, “I was impressed with Tommy from the get go. He understood the problem and how to solve it.”
Demeo says Accardi can now connect the controller to his computer with a USB cable and program it on his own. Thus, the amount of time that the system allows before engaging the brakes can be varied. Because the box has flash memory, it can record incidents where the anti-rollaway system was activated and store the data for later download to a computer. Future programming and hardware tweaks would enable truck owners to get a GPS reading on exactly where such incidents took place and either email or text the data to management.
The 3″ X 4″ programmable controller box is about an inch thick and was purchased “off the shelf.” The controller can be installed in either a truck’s cab or under the hood, as long as it’s no more than four feet from the vehicle’s diagnostic port. Accardi says that installation takes between two and four hours and can be done by truck manufacturers, companies with a fleet of trucks or “anyone who can fool with air brakes.”
A volunteer fireman for more than 20 years, Accardi’s day job is supervisor of a waste transfer station. He is clearly proud that all but one part of his anti-rollaway system was manufactured in the US.
“It’s a great country,” he says. “I want everything made here.”
With a $2,500 price tag, the system may seem pricey for the prevention of accidents that are somewhat rare, but as HTK Engineering’s marketing director, Victor Yannacone III, points out, a rollaway accident can be quite costly for an insurance company: a single accident involving a fatality can result in millions of dollars of liability and injuries or property damage can cost hundreds of thousands. HTK expects insurance companies to offer premium reductions around 5% to 10% to truck owners who install its anti-rollaway system. For owners who shell out $20,000 to $30,000 a year for insurance, such savings would pay for the cost of the unit in two or three years.
Peat fires can be a common occurrence during a dry Minnesota summer. They are normally rare in the middle of the winter, but this season may be an exception.
The winter peat fire Dec. 26 near the town of Gully in Polk County, which was ignited by a surface fire in grass and brush, is an example of the increased challenges faced by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and local fire fighters. They battled cold, wintery conditions to control the fire before ultimately putting it out.
“It’s unusual for us to be battling a peat fire at this time of year,” said Brian Pisarek, DNR Northeast Region program forester and peat fire expert. “The lack of precipitation this fall made conditions just right for something like this to happen.”
There have been several other wildfires that resulted in peat ignition in northwestern Minnesota from fall through early January. That’s a testament to the unusual weather conditions in Minnesota recently.
Flooding the burning peat, or using peat nozzles attached to a hose, are the most efficient and effective ways to extinguish a fire, and the least disruptive to the area soils and vegetation. Flooding consists of building a dike around the fire and using large irrigation pipes to completely cover the ground in water. Peat nozzles, designed much like a metal garden wand, are inserted under the peat to shoot high-pressure streams of water into areas where the peat is burning underground.
Battling winter peat fires by flooding or with peat nozzles can be difficult. That’s because accessing nearby water and keeping water pumping equipment from freezing before and during delivery of the water to the fire can be challenging. Water doesn’t flow well when air temperatures are in the teens or single digits.
“Normally, we can find a nearby water source in a ditch or neighboring pond or lake,” explained Dana Carlson, Warroad area forest supervisor. “But in the winter, and with the drought conditions, it can be difficult to access available local water sources. That can cost us fire-fighting time, and require a greater amount of manpower and resources to haul water from greater distances.”
Other common tools used to extinguish peat fires are excavators and dozers. Heavy equipment is used to mix burning peat with deeper layers of soil that still contain moisture. The equipment breaks up the burning particles, mixing, cooling and sealing the peat off from oxygen so it is no longer able to burn. Tillage equipment can also mix surface snow or applied water to help extinguish burning peat.
Areas of peat are found throughout Minnesota. Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed plant material, often found in wetlands or areas that had been wetlands at one time. It can accumulate to a depth of from 20-30 inches to several feet in deep bogs. Peat soil generally absorbs moisture, but unusually dry conditions, such as those Minnesota is experiencing this winter, can desiccate the upper peat layers and increase the potential for peat soils to burn. Ironically, when peat is extremely dry it becomes hydrophobic, meaning it actually repels water.
Peat fires are dangerous to extinguish because the fire smolders beneath the ground as a glowing combustion rather than as an open flame. Windy conditions can cause peat embers to pop up to the surface and ignite surrounding frozen, dry vegetation. Firefighters are at risk of severe burns on their feet and legs if they fall into subsurface pockets of burning peat. The heavy, dense peat fire smoke can lead to respiratory problems in people and livestock. It also has caused vehicle crashes in low-visibility driving conditions.
The Dec. 26 peat fire has been extinguished, but the area is being monitored by DNR foresters. Unchecked, peat fires have the potential to last for years during cyclic dry periods.
With little fall precipitation, warm winter temperatures and scarce snow cover, an unusual winter fire season is upon us, and spring may come in “like a lion” in a few months.
According to the Minnesota climatology office, “without ample, widespread precipitation in the late winter and early spring, the state will face deficient soil moisture supplies and low water levels in wetlands, lakes and rivers.” Additionally, areas with a hard deep frost and lack of snow cover will experience increased runoff in the spring, resulting in less groundwater recovery. It is anticipated this will contribute to control problems if fire ignitions do occur.
“It would be extremely helpful to get much needed winter moisture followed by a nice slow melt,” Pisarek said. “We firefighters would all sleep better at nights – at least through the next few winter months.”
While returning from a trailer fire I heard GFD tone out for a reported car fire in the area of 20th and Chase, a thick black header was visible from a mile away. Crews from Engine 4 put a quick knock on the fire and nobody was hurt. While they were working, a rubbernecker slammed head-on with another vehicle just down the street. GPD was on scene asap, it appeared there were no injuries at the crash.
(video link below, they wouldn’t allow embedding it) Wonder Why?
Mabas 25 Seneca Illinois Fire Dept -17 Yachts on Fire Fully Involved "Spring Brook Marina Fire" Wish I had the boat sales dealership there in Seneca.
Filmed by Todd Sherman
Fire turns cabin cruisers to ashes at Seneca marina | Today's (Jan. 12, 2012) As Seneca Fire Chief Jerry Sears Thursday watched firefighters douse hot spots left by a huge fire that spread to more than a dozen cabin cruisers at Spring Brook Marina, he admitted, "We may never know (how this fire started)..." The boats were drydocked in storage next to others, which...
It's the 2011 Singing Year in Review! This year had so much melodic news that Uncle Jay couldn't fit it all in. But you can get the EXTENDED EPISODE on this year's 2011 DVD, available on Uncle Jay's website. Thanks for being Uncle Jay's job creator!
Baby left with West Side firefighters ABC7Chicago.com January 16, 2012 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- A young, distraught mother left her six-month-old baby at a Chicago fire station on the city's West Side. The child, a boy, is being checked out at Stroger Hospital. Firefighters at Engine 107 firehouse in the ... See all stories on this topic »
Firefighters Offer Heating Safety Tips WCYB While firefighters are responding to less fires caused by kerosene, Avoca firefighters have battled four fires so far this year when it comes to chimneys. "That's probably one of our largest call volumes throughout the winter," said Taylor. ... See all stories on this topic »
A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside. This was due to the way the production line was set up, and people with experience in designing production lines will tell you how difficult it is to have everything happen with timing so precise that every single unit coming out of it is perfect 100% of the time. Small variations in the environment (which can’t be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality assurance checks smartly distributed across the line so that customers all the way down to the supermarket don’t get ticked-off and buy another product instead. Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem, as their engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra effort. The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution — on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. They solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing another button when done to re-start the line. A while later, the CEO decides to have a look at the ROI of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. Very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share. “That’s some money well spent!” – he says, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report. It turns out, the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0, after three weeks of production use. It should’ve been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. He launched an investigation, and after some work, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct. The scales really weren't picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good. Puzzled, the CEO traveled down to the factory, and walked up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed. A few feet before the scale, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing any empty boxes off of the belt and into a bin. “Oh, that,” says one of the workers — “one of the guys put it there ’cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang”.
NUGENT: Diversity perversity Diversity is America’s greatest strength, according to the left and its socialist, Marxist, commie cohorts and co-conspirators running rampant across the country. If you listen carefully to these America-hating, social-engineering liberals, virtually all behavior, conduct, morals and beliefs make America stronger. This, of course, is toxic, brain-dead logic that leaves ordinary Americans shaking and scratching their heads in confusion and disgust. We recognize bull dung when we hear, see and smell it, and we have no desire whatsoever to embrace it. The left’s definition of diversity does not make America stronger. It is weakening and destroying America. Let’s be bold and honest: The left’s version of diversity is repugnant. Hey, I’m your biggest supporter if you want to swan-dive naked into a pool of goat urine. What I will never support is trying to make it mandatory for everyone to do it. Read the rest of this ass-kicking article HERE.
New Effort to Engage Fire Service, Community Organizations, Residents
The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) is developing a new fire safety awareness effort that will bring the Fire Service, communities, organizations, and residents together to reduce the fire problem in America. The effort will encourage everyone to help reduce home fires and will provide users with one common message of personal responsibility and proactive fire safety: "Fire is Everyone's Fight."
The Fire Service Media Corps (formerly Quick Response Media Corps) and the monthly E-bulletin will be discontinued. USFA will still send you updates on this new, exciting initiative. Stay tuned…
Subscribe and Stay in Touch with the USFA
The USFA would like to keep in touch with you. If you haven’t already subscribed to the email alerts or RSS feeds, please do.
The subscriptions topics cover a wide range of information such as Civilian Fire Fatality Notifications, Fire service Alerts and Coffee Break training.
By subscribing, you ensure that you will not miss out on any important fire and life safety information and you may find that USFA can assist you in some new ways.
How One Fire Department Gets Fire Safety Information Into the Community
Featured fire department: Kissimmee Fire Department (Kissimmee, FL)
Department contributor: Joan Robinson, Health and Safety Lieutenant
Outreach activities: The Kissimmee Fire Department participates in a monthly local access TV "safety spot," disseminates cooking safety fliers to participants at an annual food drive (co-sponsored by the fire department), and distributes press releases covering a variety of fire prevention and safety topics.
Now Available: New Interactive Map of Media-Reported Fire Fatalities
An interactive map is now available that allows users to create detailed reports of recent, media-reported fatal home fires and resulting fatalities. Reports can be customized using a variety of search criteria such as: date range, reported cause, victim details and whether smoke alarms were present and working at the time of the fire.
While the interactive map provides users with a way to access more recent fatal fire information, the data generated should not be considered complete. Most fires require a post-incident investigation that may take days or months to complete. Only at the conclusion of the investigation will relevant facts be determined. For this reason, the statistics found using this interactive map are only preliminary and should be viewed as such.
"Even after the Super Bowl victory of the New Orleans Saints, I have noticed a large number of people implying, with bad jokes, that Cajuns aren't smart. I would like to state for the record that I disagree with that assessment. Anybody that would build a city 5 feet below sea level in a hurricane zone and fill it with Democrats who can't swim is a genius."
THIS CABLE GUY HUMOR IS FUNNY BUT UNFORTUNANTLY ITS TRUE! THE MANS A GENIUS!!!
Everyone concentrates on the problems we're having in Our Country lately: Illegal immigration, hurricane recovery, alligators attacking people in Florida . .. .. . Not me -- I concentrate on solutions for the problems -- it's a win-win situation. * Dig a moat the length of the Mexican border. * Send the dirt to New Orleans to raise the level of the levees. * Put the Florida alligators in the moat along the Mexican border. Any other problems you would like for me to solve today? Think about this: 1. Cows 2. The Constitution 3. The Ten Commandments COWS Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she slept in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow. THE CONSTITUTION They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq .... why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore. THE 10 COMMANDMENTS The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this -- you cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal' 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery' and 'Thou Shall Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians, it creates a hostile work environment. Also, think about this ..... If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone -- YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM! GET ER DONE!
Denise Crosby: Beware of hot trends that could burn down your house
After followed the instructions carefully: After washing the spud, she wrapped it in a paper towel and placed it inside the blue and orange cloth glove. Less than three minutes later, the inside of her microwave was on fire.
Turns out the word is out ... sort of. There are lots of kudos to be found online about these trendy potato bags. But mixed with the accolades are plenty of cautionary tales: About the mitts and microwaves — even vent hoods — catching on fire .
And don't forget, a microwave potatobag makes a great gift for any occasion: housewarming, birthday, Christmas, welcome, going away, whatever.
How To Make Potato Baker Bags : TipNut.com Perfectly baked potatoes using a microwave and a fabric bag? Great! Here’s the idea: Sew a bagmade with cotton fabric that is padded with cotton batting (both ... tipnut.com/make-your-own-potato-baker-bags
Jan 3: Eighty-one U.S. firefighters died as a result of incidents that occurred in 2011.
This represents an almost seven percent decrease from the 87 fatalities reported for 2010.
EMMITSBURG, MD — The United States Fire Administration (USFA) announced today there were 81 on-duty firefighter fatalities in the United States as a result of incidents that occurred in 2011. This represents an almost seven percent decrease from the 87 fatalities reported for 2010. The 81 fatalities occurred in 33 states, one U.S. territory, and one overseas U.S. military facility. Texas experienced the highest number of fatalities (seven). North Carolina experienced six firefighter deaths and was the only other state with five or more firefighter fatalities.
Now a mechanic with just a year of community college under his belt has unveiled a system to prevent rollaways. 44 year-old 
The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) is developing a new fire safety awareness effort that will bring the Fire Service, communities, organizations, and residents together to reduce the fire problem in America. The effort will encourage everyone to help reduce home fires and will provide users with one common message of personal responsibility and proactive fire safety: "Fire is Everyone's Fight."
