NEWS
Departments
New Owners for Mars
Mars Signal Light Company has new ownership and new management. The new president, Robert R. Wylie, heads a group of Florida industrialists who have purchased all of the assets of Mars. “During the transition, the plant was closed for a short period. We now have management and production staffs in place. Our manufacturing equipment has been refurbished and expanded. Mars Signal Light is once again in full operation and shipping top-quality warning light and sound systems to its customers around the world” said Wylie.
Call for Help: Automatically
American Bell has introduced an Emergency Call System which, according to the company should reduce the number of lives and property lost in fires each year.
A study conducted by the U.S. Fire Administration in 1981 reported 2,828,000 fire incidents, $6.5 billion in property losses, 31,000 injuries, and 7,600 deaths due to fire.
Smoke detectors, designed to decrease the number of fire-related deaths by alerting people to the presence of fire, could reduce those figures by 37 percent where detectors are in operation.
Now American Bell has increased the efficiency of the detector through the Emergency Call System (ECS). The smoke/fire alert system operates via a transmitter to contact outside personnel when the house is unoccupied and a fire has begun. When the smoke detector sounds a warning the transmitter signals a console, activating a voice synthesized message which repeats the word “fire” for 30 seconds. If the cancel button is not pushed within that time, the console automatically dials a pre-programmed emergency number such as the fire department, and through a message made by the owner, reports the fire, address, phone number and other pertinent information. 3 If the owner has selected a number other than the fire department, and the call is not acknowledged, the console dials a second number and alternates between the two numbers until it has gone through the process four times or until the machine is shut off manually. The units, which have been endorsed by the Firemen’s Fund Insurance Company, are available at American Bell Phcre Centers.
Dousing the Fire
A two-man crew retrofitted a California house with an inexpensive fire sprinkler system featuring polybutylene pipe and then set the house on fire. The installation/fire test project was labeled an “unqualified success” by Ron Coleman, Director of Fire Protection for the San Clemente Fire Department, who conceived and supervised the project. The installation and fire tests were witnessed by fire chiefs, building developers, plumbing contractors and sprinkler installers.
According to Coleman the purpose of the demonstration was to retrofit an existing single family dwelling using state of the art technology, quick responding residential sprinkler heads and polybutylene pipe. The objective was to determine if a dwelling could be retrofitted with existing materials and technology in a reasonable period of time, and cost to the owner.
Second Edition
The Amercian Petroleum Institute has released the second edition of API Publication 2200, Repairing Crude Oil, Liquefied Petroleum Gas and Product Pipeline.
Developed by the API Committee on Safety and Fire Protection, the publication is a guide to safe repair practices for pipelines in crude oil, liquefied petroleum gas and products service. Copies of the publication and information on other API publications can be obtained by contacting the API Publications Department, 2101 L Street, NW, Washington DC 20037.
