Research materials available are limited to articles actually published in Fire Engineering or one of its predecessors. Generally, bound volumes and annual indexes are available for each year of publication back to 1877, but there are exceptions. Moreover, not all historic or notable fires were necessarily fully covered, or even mentioned in the magazine.

Also, articles might have appeared in IFS: Industrial Fire Safety, which was published every other month from November/December 1992 through January/February 1994. It focused on fire safety at industrial complexes. Several articles appearing in IFS also appeared in Fire Engineering.

To expedite research, please have as specific information as possible (date, topic, municipality, and type of incident). Please determine this information if possible before contacting Fire Engineering. The time and staff available to research materials are extremely limited.

You can also search the Fire Engineering archives at our Web site at emberly.fireengineering.com/archive. At the top right of the Fire Engineering home page, click on the magnifying glass icon to begin a search. Online articles date back only to about 1995 or so; any articles not available there would be contained in our bound volumes. Also on the home page, you can scroll down to the “Current Issue” section toward the bottom of page. At the top right of that section, click on “View Past Issues”; on the page that comes up, you can select past issues by year, and then by month. On that same page under “More Resources” at the bottom, click on “Editorial Indices” (arranged by year, subject, and author back to 1990).

For further assistance in your research, contact the following:

National Fire Protection Association,

1 Batterymarch Park, Quincy, Massachusetts 02269-9101.

Telephone: (617) 770-3000. Fax: (617) 984-7130.

Web site: www.nfpa.org

National Fire Academy

Open Learning Resource Center,

16825 South Seton Avenue

Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727

Outside Maryland, telephone: (800) 638-1821;

inside Maryland: (301) 447-1030; Fax (301) 447-3217.

E-mail: netclrc@fema.gov.

Online card catalog link: https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/library/. Scroll down to “Search our library’s catalog:” enter search terms. 

City of New York (NY) Fire Department Training Academy

The Mand Library

Randall’s Island, NY 10035

Telephone, (212) 860-9487; Fax, (212) 860-9222.

Other resources: 

Web site: http://www.firemuseumnetwork.org/resources/fire_resources.html

Both libraries have extensive fire service collections. Please share this information with other researchers, too. If there are other worthwhile fire service research resources available, please forward that information to me. If you have any questions, contact Robert Maloney at Robert.Maloney@clarionevents.com, 973-251-5054, 9 am to 5 pm Eastern time.