On the afternoon of August 31, 2013, fire broke out at the roof level near the center of a nearly 300,000-square-foot food distribution warehouse in Delanco, New Jersey.
Cornices, the decorative trim at the top of exterior walls of many 19th-century buildings, were typically made of stone, wood, sheet metal over wood, or just metal. This side view of a 21st-century descendent shows its synthetic polystyrene core and plywood backing. These new cornices still pose a collapse potential and can spread fire just like their ancestors.
As a fire service instructor teaching new recruits, you're concerned with many issues: ensuring that you have the proper equipment to conduct a training session, double-checking the safety procedures that will be used, verifying that the techniques you will be teaching can be understood and replicated by the students.
As the scope of the World Trade Center (WTC) tragedy came into focus in the hours following the attacks, I wondered what happened to the towers. Why did they come down so quickly?
Today's elementary and high schools are relatively fire-safe, having built on tragedies of the past, including the Our Lady of the Angels school fire in Chicago in 1958.
"What? How many a-larms?" asked Fire Marshal George Earnest as he walked into his office. He made himself a cup of coffee, a necessary evil to get him going so early in the morning.