Budget proposes cuts to key fire service programs

The Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 budget proposed by the Obama Administration in March recommended a decrease of about $1 billion from FY 2014 appropriations for the department, according to the Congressional Fire Services Institute (CFSI). The $3.9 trillion budget, which is an estimated increase of $250 billion over the FY 2014 level, contains $38.2 billion for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This represents a decrease of approximately $1 billion.

The proposed budget also offers the following appropriations for fire and emergency services programs:

• The Assistance to Firefighters (FIRE) and the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant programs would be reduced by $10 million to $670 million for both grant programs. In FY 2014, Congress appropriated $680 million, an increase of $5 million over the previous fiscal year.
• Reduce funding for the United States Fire Administration’s budget to $41.407 million, about the same amount the Administration requested for FY 2014. Congress appropriated $44 million for FY 2014.
• Cut funding for the Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Response System by approximately 20 percent-proposes $27.513 million compared to $35.18 million, which Congress approved for this fiscal year.
• The Volunteer Fire Assistance Program, which provides funding to state forestry agencies for grants to fire departments to purchase firefighting equipment and training to respond to wildland fires in rural jurisdictions, would receive $13 million for FY 2015. In FY 2014, $13.025 million was appropriated.

“Now that the White House has released its budget, the CFSI will begin its work with the other national fire service organizations and our supporters on Capitol Hill to shield these programs from budget cuts as Congress begins its work on the FY 2015 appropriations legislation,” says Bill Webb, CFSI executive director. The CFSI will provide updates throughout the activities of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees as they draft spending bills for FY 2015.

FPRF studies safety challenges of tall wood buildings in fires

The Fire Protection Research Foundation, an affiliate of the National Fire Protection Association, recently released the “Fire Safety Challenges of Tall Wood Buildings” report http://bit.ly/N1qdLX The Foundation’s Property Insurance Research Group undertook the study to gain an understanding of how tall wood buildings perform under credible fire scenarios and to help ensure the safety of the occupants against emissions, thermal hazards, and property protection of the building and nearby structures.

According to the Foundation, architectural trends are to use engineered wood as a structural material for tall buildings. “These buildings, cited for their advantages in sustainability resulting from the use of a renewable construction material, are constructed from wood products that include cross laminated timber, laminated veneer lumber, or glued laminated timber,” the Foundation explains. These types of wood, the Foundation continues, are used “on a variety of buildings including a newly constructed 10-story residential apartment building in Australia, and plans for taller structures in Vancouver and Norway are in development.”

Among the issues the Foundation will be investigating in its Phase 2 project is the claim that these structures are designed to be safer than buildings made of structural steel because of the formation of an insulating char layer that forms on the perimeter of a laminated wood beam when exposed to a fire.

The goal of Phase 1 was to conduct a literature review and identify knowledge gaps related to fire safety in tall wood buildings. Phase 2 will address the knowledge gaps identified in Phase 1.

WPI researchers examine green building fire concerns

A team of fire protection engineering researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is investigating the fire safety risks associated with green construction. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security $1 million grant will fund a three-year project that began in August 2013 and will end in July 2016. The objectives will be to identify and reduce the potential for firefighter and occupant injuries and deaths that could be associated with unanticipated hazards posed by green building elements.

Brian Meachan, WPI associate professor of fire protection engineering, in 2012 coauthored “Fire Safety Challenges of Green Buildings.” This report, commissioned by the Fire Protection Research Foundation (FPRF), the research arm of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), examined the impact of sustainable construction techniques and materials on fire safety and surveyed them for their fire safety implications.

The team assembled a list of 78 green building features and construction elements that could have implications for fire safety and developed a list of potential hazards associated with the features and elements of green construction, including greater flammability, faster burn rate, and increased hindrance to firefighters. Among them were the ignition and electrocution hazards posed by roof solar panels.

Meacham will work with co-investigators Nicholas Dembsey, professor of fire protection engineering at WPI, and Michael Gollner and Andre Marshall of the University of Maryland. The FPRF, the NFPA, and the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services will provide collaborative support.

The researchers will review domestic fire incident data reporting and fire investigation reports in Massachusetts and selected national locations to determine if and how relevant green building data are reported and investigate how to supplement fire incident data collection to capture pertinent information on sustainable building elements. The collected data will be analyzed to see how green building elements performed against conventional construction.

When quantified data on the fire performance of green building features does not exist, the researchers will fill in the gaps by conducting fire tests and firefighter tactics assessments. The data will focus on factors that could increase hazards to firefighters in such areas as access time, increased fire size, visibility, toxicity issues, and structural response to fire. New data collection will involve fire performance experiments, computer simulation, and firefighter response and tactics assessments.

The project will also suggest modifications to tactical firefighting for green buildings, the development of education and training material on fire hazards of green buildings, and changes to building codes and standards, where necessary. Working with the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services, WPI students will visit fire scenes to collect building data that can be identified as green or sustainable and determine whether it played a role in the fire. On completion of the project, the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services will file any recommended amendments to update the state building code, as well as provide support at the national level for code changes in areas deemed to impact firefighter safety.

Fire performance experiments of realistic interior and exterior fire growth scenarios will be conducted in WPI’s new Fire Protection Engineering Laboratories at Gateway Park and at the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy in Stow. WPI’s Engineering Laboratory is large enough for a two-story mockup to be constructed and burned. The lab’s 3-megawatt calorimeter can collect all the smoke from an intermediate scale burn and provide the heat release rate history.

Additional information is available from Martin Luttrell, WPI, mluttrell@wpi.edu.

Dublin City reviews privatization of ambulance service

The Dublin City (Ireland) Council (DCC) announced in March that it will review the issue of privatizing the ambulance service in the Dublin Fire Brigade, advises the Irish Fire and Emergency Services Association (IFESA). John Kidd, IFESA national secretary, noted that the proposed DCC review would duplicate the review that will be conducted by external consultants across the country. The IFESA noted that no emergency medical service consultants were named to the review panel even though Dublin Fire Brigade firefighters/paramedics respond to 40 percent of all emergency calls for ambulances in Ireland.

According to Kidd, some members of the Council have requested that the DCC review be postponed. However, Dublin’s city manager, who has a record favoring privatization, was ready to proceed with the Dublin review at press time. The IFESA is concerned that “a serious reduction in the level of services provided to the citizens of Dublin” may be the result and that “the standard of response in Dublin will be dropped to match the rest of the country when in fact the rest of the country needs to be brought up to the same standard that 40 percent of the population receive with the Dublin Fire Based EMS model.”

“Where response time is the absolute priority for medical emergencies, firefighters are in the best position to respond quickly and provide vital services,” explains the IFESA. EMS has been a part of the fire service in Dublin for more than 103 years.