Firefighters Participate in Live Fire Experiments
(Firefighter Safety and Resource Deployment Studied)

Who: Presenters: Shyam Sunder, director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Building and Fire Research Laboratory, and NIST’s Jason Averill, study co-principal investigator. Available for interview: Shayam Sunder; Jason Averill; Lori Moore-Merrell, study co-principal investigator, IAFF; Mark Light, Executive Director, IAFC; Ronald L. Mastin, Fire Chief, Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department; and Richard Bowers, Acting Fire Chief, Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service.

WHAT: A media opportunity to view firefighting operations and learn about research on improving fire safety in communities. Fire crews will respond to and suppress a live fire in a “residential structure burn pro” constructed for the experiments.

WHEN: Thursday, February 5, 2009

11 a.m. – Noon

WHERE: Montgomery County Public Safety Training Academy

9710 Great Seneca Highway

Rockville, Maryland

(Intersection of Great Seneca Highway and Darnestown Road)

Fairfax County and Montgomery County, Maryland firefighters have been responding to ‘live’ residential structure fires in a specially designed test facility as part of some experiments to study the effect of firefighter crew sizes and equipment arrival times on fire growth rate, fire victims escape ability, and damage to property.

The study is being monitored by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, with funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program. All activity including fire response, firefighting tasks, fire growth analysis, and associated documentation takes place at the Montgomery County Fire Training Center in a specially designed Class A (ordinary combustible) burn building that was recently built exclusively for this purpose.

As part of the study, Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, New York has been assessing the heart rate of firefighters while working on the fire ground based on their position, on the crew, and the crew size in the study.

Other participants in the study include (alphabetically): Center for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE), Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, International Association of Firefighters (IAFF), International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Urban Institute (UI), and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).

With the economy struggling, and local governments possibly thinking of cutting services, this study may provide the scientific data to local governments in order to make informed decisions when matching firefighter crew sizes (staffing) and mobile resources to the risk levels and needs of their individual communities.