Assessing the Needs of the U.S. Fire Service
The NFPA Podcast
Every five years since 2001, NFPA has conducted a massive research project known as the . It’s a survey that goes out to about 30,000 fire departments across the country with questions aimed at finding out whether the fire service has the resources it needs to accomplish the enormous job we’ve asked them to take on. The next survey, which is the Sixth Needs Assessment, was sent to departments via mail and email in October, and is due back by February 15. Today on the podcast, we are joined by an all-star panel featuring the president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs,...
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Will Female Firefighters Soon Have Better Fitting Gear?
The NFPA Podcast
About 80 percent of female firefighters say that their personal protective clothing doesn’t fit right, and studies show that ill-fitting gear puts women at greater risk of being injured on the job. In this podcast from 2023, Jesse talks to two textile researchers working on multi-year project to better understand the issue and to gather the data needed to design female-specific turnout gear. Before the episode, Jesse gives a quick update on the project, which has now moved onto a crucial second phase. Researchers are now gathering measurements from thousands of women in the fire...
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Testing the EV Toolbox
The NFPA Podcast
Myriad new tools have emerged in recent years that claim to help firefighters safely contain and extinguish electric vehicle fires. However, few of these tools have been independently tested, until now. This year, researchers burned dozens of EV battery packs and four full-sized vehicles to assess the effectiveness of these tools and the tactics required to use them. Today on the podcast, we talk to one of the project's lead researchers to learn about how the study was done and what insights emerged. We also discuss some promising new tactics that could significantly reduce the time and...
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Cooking Fire Facts and Figures
The NFPA Podcast
Cooking is such a routine part of everyday life that it’s easy to overlook its potential dangers. According to NFPA research, cooking is the leading cause of reported home fires, home fire injuries, and home fire deaths in the United States. With Thanksgiving this week—the day with by far the most cooking fire incidents of any day on the calendar—we take a close look at NFPA’s latest cooking fire statistics to better understand how these fires start, who the victims tend to be, and what public educators should know (1:15). Then, we rerun a segment from 2020 exploring the science...
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Tilting the Wildfire Odds
The NFPA Podcast
In even the most destructive wildfires, some structures survive untouched while everything around them is incinerated. It begs the question: What factors are most responsible for determining if a home is destroyed or survives during these events? A team of researchers spent years trying to answer that important question. They gathered massive troves of data from California’s most destructive wildfires, then used artificial intelligence machine learning to analyze what factors make the biggest difference in home survivability. On today’s podcast, we talk to wildfire researcher and...
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Fire Protection Engineering’s Shifting Landscape
The NFPA Podcast
The fire protection engineering profession is in a strange place right now. For one thing, there’s a growing global shortage of FPEs just as demand for their services is surging. Factors such as accelerating technology, global building booms, and intensifying natural disasters are making their work more challenging than ever. And on top of that, some predict that artificial intelligence will completely alter how FPEs do their jobs over the next decade. Today on the podcast, I talk about all of this with Bill Koffel, a veteran fire protection engineer and director of the new online fire...
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How Clean is Clean?
The NFPA Podcast
Not long ago, a dirty, sooty turnout coat and helmet was a badge of honor in the fire service—tangible proof that a firefighter was in the action. But as concern grew about the high levels of cancer in the fire service, that culture has totally flipped. Now, fire departments around the world are going to great lengths to ensure that their members never have to wear a uniform covered in carcinogens. But to do that, you need to know when it’s actually clean. That isn’t as easy as it sounds. For the past 10 years, PPE expert Jeff Stull has helped lead a Fire Protection Research Foundation...
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Lithium-Ion Safety Messaging
The NFPA Podcast
Fire Prevention Week, which runs this year from October 5–11, is the longest running public safety observance in United States history. This year for the first time, the Fire Prevention Week theme will focus on lithium-ion battery safety. Even as the technology has become ubiquitous in modern life, the general public still remains largely unaware of the significant fire safety risks that batteries can pose. Today on the podcast we talk to Kelly Ransdell, NFPA’s director of public education, and Brian O’Connor, a technical services engineer at NFPA, about why NFPA is highlighting...
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Fire On Campus: Turning Pain Into Purpose
The NFPA Podcast
On January 19, 2000, Shawn Simons and Alvaro Llanos, then 18-year-old freshman roommates at Seton Hall University, were severely burned when the residence hall they lived in caught fire. The blaze, one of the worst at a college campus in U.S. history, killed three students and injured nearly 60 others. Shawn and Alvaro now travel the country speaking to students and responders about their journey. Today on the podcast, we chat with them about the Seton Hall fire, their grueling recovery, and what parents, students, and first responders need to know as students return to campuses this month....
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Lessons From Lewiston
The NFPA Podcast
In October 2023, a 40-year-old man armed with semi-automatic rifle opened fire inside a bowling alley and later at a nearby restaurant in the small city of Lewiston, Maine. Between the two incidents, 18 people died and 13 were injured. Disturbingly, the Lewiston shooting was one for more than 650 mass shootings in the United States in 2023, defined as a shooting event with four or more victims. With the U.S. continuing to experience hundreds of these incidents every year, police, fire, EMS, and organizations like the American Red Cross are refining how they prepare and respond to these...
info_outlineIn the United States, when someone calls 911 the call is routed to an operator at a public safety answering point, or PSAP. But news outlets across the country are finding that local PSAPs are struggling, and that 911 callers are waiting longer to get help. Today on the podcast, we speak to a researcher who just surveyed dozens of PSAPs to find out how well they are able to meet the call answering and processing times required by NFPA standards (2:44). The results were eye-opening.
Then, on a new Code Corner, with construction season in full swing, engineer Shawn Mahoney talks about the role of the fire prevention program manager on construction sites (31:08).
Links:
Read the Fire Protection Research Foundation report on PSAPs
See various NFPA resources related to construction fire prevention and safety