Report on fringe benefits and related practices affecting firefighters.

No more published?

Downstate firemen's pension funds, digest of governing act and summary of financial operations.

Mode of access: Internet.

West Physics Building. Burned while in demolition

Pond & Pond, architects. Built 1887-1888. On verso: Sept. 1966

National apprenticeship and training standards for emergency medical technicians /

Mode of access: Internet.

Training operations in small departments : student manual /

Designed to provide the student [i.e. the training officer] with the essential tools and skills to lead and manage a training program in a small department.

Using "war stories" to train for adaptive performance: Is it better to learn from error or success?

The study examines whether error exposure training can enhance adaptive performance. Fifty-nine experienced fire-fighters undergoing training for incident command participated in the study. War stories were developed based on real events to illustrate successful and unsuccessful incident command decisions. Two training methodologies were compared and evaluated. One group was trained using case studies that depicted incidents containing errors of management with severe consequences in fire-fighting outcomes (error-story training) while a second group was exposed to the same set of case studies except that the case studies depicted the incidents being managed without errors and their consequences (errorless-story training). The results provide some support for the hypothesis that it is better to learn from other people's errors than from their successes. Implications for training are discussed.

Proceedings of the ... Convention.

Mode of access: Internet.

Structural and fire behaviour of a new light gauge steel wall system

Fire design is an essential element of the overall design procedure of structural steel members and systems. Conventionally the fire rating of load-bearing stud wall systems made of light gauge steel frames (LSF) is based on approximate prescriptive methods developed on the basis of limited fire tests. This design is limited to standard wall configurations used by the industry. Increased fire rating is provided simply by adding more plasterboards to the stud walls. This is not an acceptable situation as it not only inhibits innovation and structural and cost efficiencies but also casts doubt over the fire safety of these light gauge steel stud wall systems. Hence a detailed fire research study into the performance and effectiveness of a recently developed innovative composite panel wall system was undertaken at Queensland University of Technology using both full scale fire tests and numerical studies. Experimental results of LSF walls using the new composite panels under axial compression load have shown the improvement in fire performance and fire resistance rating. Numerical analyses are currently being undertaken using the finite element program ABAQUS. Measured temperature profiles of the studs are used in the numerical models and the results are used to calibrate against full scale test results. The validated model will be used in a detailed parametric study with an aim to develop suitable design rules within the current cold-formed steel structures and fire design standards. This paper will present the results of experimental and numerical investigations into the structural and fire behaviour of light gauge steel stud walls protected by the new composite panel. It will demonstrate the improvements provided by the new composite panel system in comparison to traditional wall systems.

Before and after the fire

The work was derived from terrestrial laser scan data of a bio-diverse landscape on the SE coast of Western Australia. The scanning was conducted both before and after a significant bushfire event. The digital three dimensional scan data has been converged and then abstracted into a two dimensional vertical sections or slice which reveals the vegetal surface of heath vegetation and the surface of the landform.---------- This abstraction converts the complex data into spatial information so that it is meaningful in the context the architectural and landscape architectural design process. The primary intention behind the production of the work was to expand understanding on the means of representing and then designing for sites in ‘kwongan’ landscapes which are constituted by highly biodiverse, bushfire prone heath vegetation.

Solar powered UAV for fire prevention and planning

This project aims to develop a methodology for designing and conducting a systems engineering analysis to build and fly continuously, day and night, propelled uniquely by solar energy for one week with a 0.25Kg payload consuming 0.5 watt without fuel or pollution. An airplane able to fly autonomously for many days could find many applications. Including coastal or border surveillance, atmospherical and weather research and prediction, environmental, forestry, agricultural, and oceanic monitoring, imaging for the media and real-estate industries, etc. Additional advantages of solar airplanes are their low cost and the simplicity with which they can be launched. For example, in the case of potential forest fire risks during a warm and dry period, swarms of solar airplanes, easily launched with the hand, could efficiently monitor a large surface, reporting rapidly any fire starts. This would allow a fast intervention and thus reduce the cost of such disaster, in terms of human and material losses. At higher dimension, solar HALE platforms are expected to play a major role as communication relays and could replace advantageously satellites in a near future.