From the Publishers Desk
departments
Fire Engineering Designed for Useful Information
One of the reasons that Fire Engineering has been so successful is that for the last century plus three years the editors have followed the dictum of the first editor that the magazine would be directed to the interests of all fire fighters and particularly the chiefs. These interests included every facet of fire suppression and prevention—and particularly what was new and different.
Actually, Fire Engineering began when modern fire fighting began—with the introduction of the steam fire engine and the establishment of paid fire departments. Any new piece of equipment, training technique, fire suppression technique or what have you was printed in Fire Engineering as soon as it appeared.
We got thinking this way on reading through the articles that appear in this issue. Back quite a few years ago, we reported on the first fire simulator, designed and constructed by the United States Forest Service. This simulator was designed, naturally for forest fire fighting, but over the years others attempted to imitate this prototype and adapt it to other type fires.
The latest, which you can read about on page 22, was developed by the Montgomery County Department of Fire and Rescue Services. It is interesting to note that the simulator (an improvement on a prior one) was designed to duplicate fireground stresses—a new concept for simulators.
Increasingly enough, the system is designed so that students can view a problem from two different classrooms—providing a capability to view a problem from two angles. We won’t go into the hardware of this contraption, but what we found most interesting was that the software was designed specifically to use on problems existing in Montgomery County. The reason why we print and have printed such articles down through the years is to inform all other fire departments what is happtning, for what possible use they can make of it.
