This report details the response of the Mobile, Alabama Fire Department (MFD) to the derailment of a passenger train in a remote section of the Big Bayou Canot, nine miles north of Mobile

By the mid-nineteenth century, efforts to modernize and industrialize Mexico City had the unintended consequence of exponentially increasing the risk of fire while also breeding a culture of fear. Through an array of archival sources, Anna Rose Alexander argues that fire became a catalyst for social change, as residents mobilized to confront the problem. Advances in engineering and medicine soon fostered the rise of distinct fields of fire-related expertise while conversely, the rise of fire-profiteering industries allowed entrepreneurs to capitalize on crisis. City on Fire demonstrates that both public and private engagements with fire risk highlight the inequalities that characterized Mexican society at the turn of the twentieth century.

The articles and books listed here are a distillation of hundreds of possible entries that could have been included. They were selected by students, professors, on the ground fire practitioners, and federal researchers as excellent jumping off points for fire managers who want to become more knowledgeable about fire and the social sciences and more mindful about how human beings interconnect to make sense of the fire environment. vi Our philosophy of reading-why professionals in all walks of forest fire management can sharpen their leadership abilities through reading-parallels the "Professional Reading Program" described by the Wildland Fire Leadership Program at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho: "This reading] is not busy work; this is not drudgery. These readings will provoke reflection, discussion, and debate. The selected titles have been chosen for their intrinsic excitement as well as their content. Many of the books will be hard to put down. Let this be your roadmap to an enjoyable and rewarding reading program" (Wildland Fire Leadership Development Program 2005).

Each new print copy of Firefighting Strategies and Tactics, Enhanced Third Edition also includes Navigate 2 Advantage Access that unlocks a complete eBook, Study Center, homework and Assessment Center, and a dashboard that reports actionable data. Experience Navigate 2 today at www.jblnavigate.com/2. Firefighting Strategies and Tactics, Enhanced Third Edition Includes Navigate 2 Advantage Access is the fire service's most complete and comprehensive "strategies and tactics" resource available for fire service professionals. This textbook offers clear, systematic guidance on how to take control of the fireground - even under the most adverse conditions. In addition to residential dwellings, the Enhanced Third Edition covers best practices to safely and effectively manage fires in residential dwellings, commercial buildings, high-rises, places of assembly, vehicles, and in the wild. Firefighting Strategies and Tactics, Enhanced Third Edition Includes Navigate 2 Advantage Access features: Complete coverage of the Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education (FESHE) Strategies and Tactics model curriculum. New and improved chapter organization, including a new chapter dedicated to Pre-Fire Planning. End-of-chapter case studies that help students apply what they have learned.

This updated edition provides an overview of flame retardants that are in commercial use, were recently used, or are in development. The book is organized polymer-by-polymer and provides a guide to advantages, limitations, and patented and patent-free formulations, with insight into favorable and unfavorable combinations. The targeted readership is the plastics or textile finish compounder and the plastic additives R&D worker, as well as market development and sales. This edition contains, besides a compendium of current flame retardants, updated information relevant to performance testing, mode of action, and safety and regulatory aspects. Industrial or academic researchers will find useful a discussion of unsolved problems with possible new approaches. Both authors have extended, productive experience in both basic and applied research on a wide range of flame retardancy topics.

This report describes the results of calculations using the NIST Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) performed to provide insight on the thermal conditions that may have occurred during a wind-driven fire in a one-story ranch house on April 12, 2009 in Houston, Texas. The FDS simulations represented the building geometry, material thermal properties, and fire behavior based on information gathered from multiple sources. The simulation results are provided in this report. The FDS simulation that best represents the witnessed fire conditions indicate that fire spread throughout the attic and first floor developed a wind-driven flow with temperatures in excess of 260 C (500 F) between the den and front door. The critical event in this fire was the creation of a wind-driven flow path between a large span of failed windows on the upwind side of the structure, and the open front door on the downwind side of the structure. Floor-to-ceiling temperatures rapidly increased in the flow path, in which members were performing interior operations. In a simulation without wind, the flow path was not created after the large span of windows failed, and the thermal environment surrounding the location of interior operations improved.

The objective of this study was to compare the levels of hazard created by room fires in a dormitory building with and without automatic fire sprinklers in the room of fire origin. This report describes a series of experiments where fires were initiated in a dormitory sleeping room. The description of the experimental conditions includes: the geometry and construction of the building, the fuel load in the sleeping rooms, and the location of the instrumentation used to measure gas temperature, oxygen, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide concentrations and heat flux. Smoke alarm activation and sprinkler activation times are also reported. Five experiments were conducted. In two of the experiments, the door between the sleeping room (room of fire origin) and the corridor was closed. In the other three experiments the door from the sleeping room (room of fire origin) remained open to the corridor. In each case, door closed or door open, one of the experiments was sprinklered. The results from the experiments comparing the sprinklered and non-sprinklered sleeping room are presented. The results from these experiments demonstrate the potential life safety benefits of smoke alarms, compartmentation, and automatic fire sprinkler systems in college dormitories and similar occupancies. These experiments were conducted by NIST in cooperation with the University of Arkansas and the Fayetteville Fire Department.

This report documents a set of 9 full scale ISO 9705 room under-ventilated compartment fire experiments for the purpose of guiding the development of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) computer fire model - Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS). The gas species composition and temperature throughout the interior of the compartment was mapped during quasi-steady burning conditions using movable measurement probes. In conjunction with the gas species and temperature measurements, global heat release rate, global burning mass rate, and local heat flux measurements were taken. The tests yielded detailed maps. From the data collected, the mixture fraction (with and without soot included in the calculations), local equivalence ratio, carbon monoxide and soot yields, fractional carbon monoxide and soot ratios, and combustion efficiency for each test were determined. Results from ethanol (a low sooting fuel) and heptane (a mildly sooting fuel) are presented. The results collected in this set of experiments were also compared and contrasted to the results of similar tests done in the previous report in this series of testing, NIST Technical Note 1603: Experimental Study of the Effects of Fuel Type, Fuel Distribution, and Vent Size on Full-Scale Underventilated Compartment Fires in an ISO 9705 Room.

For the last forty years, NIST has led the world in fire metrology through research conducted at the Large Fire Laboratory, which is being expanded to enable experiments on real-scale structures under combined structural and fire loads. The combined capabilities of large fire testing and structural fire testing will be comprised in the National Fire Research Laboratory (NFRL), which is expected to be completed in 2013. Measurements of temperature, displacement, and strain at hundreds of points on a structural system in the fire zone are needed to validate analytical tools for fire conditions. However, the ability to measure the performance of structures during realistic fire exposures is severely limited due to a significant gap in measurement science. At present, temperatures are measured with thermocouples and strains are measured with high temperature strain gages. Each of these sensors requires a separate line for data collection during the experiment. Further, high temperature strain gages are unreliable and often do not perform as expected during fire tests. Significant improvements to structural measurement in fire conditions are needed to advance the validation of analytical tools and performance based design methodologies. Candidate methods for temperature, displacement, and strain measurements that could meet these performance requirements were reviewed. A demonstration test that employed a natural gas burner in the Large Fire Facility evaluated the potential of digital image correlation and high temperature strain gages to measure thermally induced strains.The technology review and the outcome of the demonstration test indicate that digital image correlation and fiber optic methods have great promise for temperature, displacement, and strain measurement. A four-stage development plan is proposed to overcome these challenges.

A standard procedure is needed for obtaining smoke toxic potency data for use in fire hazard and risk analyses. Room fire testing of finished products is impractical, directing attention to the use of apparatus that can obtain the needed data quickly and at affordable cost. This report presents examination of the fourth of a series bench-scale fire tests to produce data on the yields of toxic products in both pre-flashover and post-flashover flaming fires. The apparatus is the ISO 5660-1 / ASTM E 1354 cone calorimeter, modified to have an enclosure and a gas delivery system allowing variable oxygen concentration. The test specimens was cut from finished products that were also burned in room-scale tests: a sofa made of upholstered cushions on a steel frame, particleboard bookcases with a laminated finish, and household electric cable. Initially, the standard test procedure was followed. Subsequent variation in the procedure included reducing the supplied oxygen volume fraction to 0.18, 0.16, and 0.14, reducing the incident heat flux to 25 kW/m2, and reducing the gas flow rate by half. The yields of CO2 CO, HCl, and HCN were determined. The yields of other toxicants (NO, NO2, formaldehyde, and acrolein) were below the detection limits, but volume fractions at the detection limits were shown to be of limited toxicological importance relative to the detected toxicants. In general, performing the tests at the reduced oxygen volume fraction led to small increases on the toxic gas yields. The exceptions were an increase in the CO yield for the bookcase at 0.14 oxygen volume fraction. Reducing the incident heat flux had little effect on the toxic gas yields, other than increasing variability. Reducing the gas flow rate reduced the limits of detection by half, but also resulted in reduced gas yields at lower oxygen volume fractions. In none of the procedure variations did the CO yield approach the value of 0.2 found in real-scale post flashover fire tests.

The dispersion and loss of helium inside a single-car residential garage attached to a single-family house was experimentally characterized by recording time-resolved helium concentrations at multiple locations in the garage and at a single location in the house during and following helium releases near the floor of the garage. Helium served as a surrogate for hydrogen for safety reasons, and helium release rates were adjusted to provide the same constant volume flow rate as that required to release 5 kg of hydrogen over a four hour period. Supporting measurements included compartment leakage, temperature, and atmospheric wind conditions. Helium was released upwards either as momentum- or buoyancydominated flows. Experiments were performed with the garage empty or with one of two conventional mid-sized automobiles parked over the release location. Six tests with the garage naturally ventilated and six tests employing forced ventilation with a fan are described. A variety of parameters were used to characterize the mixing behavior. Conclusions emphasized include: a) the role of Froude number on helium mixing behavior, b) the development of upper and lower helium concentration layers in the garage during a release, c) the measurable, but limited, effects of atmospheric wind on the results, d) the relatively efficient transfer of helium from the garage into the house during the releases, e) the ability of a vehicle to trap a high helium concentration in the engine compartment and, particularly, the undercarriage during a helium release and the relatively rapid drop in these levels to those of the surrounding garage at the end of the release, f) the relatively slow buildup of helium in the passenger compartment and trunk of a vehicle during a helium release and subsequent slow decay following cessation of the flow, g) the effectiveness of active ventilation in reducing helium concentrations in the garage to levels below those corresponding to flammable concentrations of hydrogen, and h) the trapping of helium/air mixtures corresponding to highly flammable hydrogen mixtures inside the vehicles even when active garage ventilation was employed.

FASTLite is a collection of procedures which builds on the core routines of FIREFORM and the computer model CFAST to provide engineering calculations of fire phenomena for the building designer, code official, fire protection engineer and fire safety related practitioner. This manual provides documentation and examples for using FASTLite. It describes how to install the software on a computer and provides a guide for the use of FASTLite using an example.

Although these agents are typically employed in unoccupied sections of an aircraft, the possibility of human exposure still exists during handling, storage, and transport. Thus, it is important to know if the accidental release of the 12 agents in areas of typical occupancy would result in differing threats to life safety. At least two topics are important in assessing the impact of a potential release of an agent: 1) how does the agent distribute in an occupied space upon an accidental release, and 2) how does this release affect personnel who may be exposed? For the former, a series of tests was conducted to study the release of four of the twelve agents in a sealed compartment to measure the airborne concentration of agent that results from complete venting of containers of typical size into spaces of typical volume. These tests were augmented with field modeling to extend the range of the test results to other compartment geometries. For the latter, published toxicological results for chronic or acute exposure are summarized. It is important to note that in these tests, no humans were exposed.

This guide is intended to offer both small and large, career and volunteer departments, specific recommendations and example for applying ergonomics. The guide's contents includes an introduction to ergonomics, ergonomic-related disorders, developing an ergonomics program, ergonomic hazards, preventing and controlling ergonomic hazards, training, medical management, procedures for reporting injuries, implementing the ergonomic program, and evaluating program effectiveness.

The purpose of this manual is to provide the training officer and those who ar responsible within the department to train their vehicle operators with a better understanding of the seriousness of driver training.

The Guide provides a preliminary discussion of sprinkler coverage area, water flow, and water pressure. After this discussion, the Guide is divided into two parts: Part 1: Hydraulic Worksheet and Part 2: Sprinkler Target Zones.