Site Map - Fire Safety

12/12/2007 - An IT room is now safe not only from fire but from the damage an outdated suppression system might have done.

12/12/2007 - Highly acclaimed in its first edition, the update of Geoff Craighead's High-Rise Security and Fire Life Safety manages to outdo the original. The thoroughly referenced work picks up where the last edition left off, detailing advances in practices and technology as well as discussing the impact of the destruction of the Twin Towers. It's destined to be a bible to building security professionals, an in-depth overview for other security professionals, and an engaging read for laypersons.

11/29/2007 - Revenues from CCTV and fire-detection equipment will drive a booming industrial and commercial security market in Central and Eastern Europe through 2010, forecasts Frost & Sullivan. But security market leaders such as Siemens, Bosch, Tyco, and Honeywell "are likely to be challenged by the interest in cheaper products of lower quality offered by local and Asian manufacturers," according to a Frost & Sullivan statement.

11/27/2007 - A bill (S. 620) that would have provided federal grants to install sprinklers or other fire suppression or prevention technologies in college and university dorms died in committee. The funds could have been used by public and private institutions to provide fire-safety equipment in all campus housing including sorority and fraternity houses. 

11/14/2007 - A report provides lessons from fires at 22 European cultural institutions.

11/08/2007 - The Texas Supreme Court has overturned a jury verdict in favor of a man who died from burns he received during an explosion at his company. A jury awarded the man's family $42.5 million in damages due to the company's gross negligence in permitting the explosion. The state supreme court, after reviewing the facts in the case, ruled that the company had implemented numerous safety measures to protect against such explosions and had a vested interest in keeping the workplace safe and operational. (Diamond Shamrock Refining Co. v. Donna Hall, Supreme Court of Texas, No. 02-0566. 2005)

11/07/2007 - College students are many things, but cautious isn’t usually one of them. And when the emotional tinder swirling in young adults mixes with physical tinder, such as paper and cheap furniture, in population-dense dorms, the combination can be highly combustible. That may be one of the reasons why about 1,300 fires occur in U.S. college and university dormitories every year. Unfortunately, in most dorm fires, no automatic sprinkler system is there to douse the flames.As part of a U.S. Fire Administration initiative to improve fire safety in college housing, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted fire experiments in abandoned dorm rooms in Arkansas. Link to NIST via SM Online to get the free DVD .

11/02/2007 - Shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is a no-no, but what’s worse is not having adequate fire protection in that same crowded theater. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center does not appear to comply with some fire-safety requirements. Auditors found, for instance, that there was no program for managing the storage of scenery, props, and other combustible materials. GAO testimony on the topic is at SM Online.

11/02/2007 - How to ensure that security devices don’t create life-safety problems, especially with regard to egress points.

11/01/2007 - A report on fires in student housing finds that most occurred off-campus.

10/29/2007 - 7 Percent of calls to U.S. fire departments in 2003 that were made to report actual fires. The vast majority of calls to fire departments, according to the National Fire Protection Association, sought medical assistance, while false alarms accounted for one out of every ten calls.

10/04/2007 - The 2002 decision to transfer agriculture inspections to Customs and Border Protection has hurt the nation's ability to protect against foreign pests.

09/27/2007 - When it released NFPA 730 (Guide to Premises Security) and NFPA 731 (Standard for the Installation of Electronic Premises Security Systems) in 2005, several security industry associations and leaders questioned why a fire-standards organization was getting involved in security