3,563 research outputs found

    The impact of fire suppression tasks on firefighter hydration: A critical review with consideration of the utility of reported hydration measures

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    BACKGROUND: Firefighting is a highly stressful occupation with unique physical challenges, apparel and environments that increase the potential for dehydration. Dehydration leaves the firefighter at risk of harm to their health, safety and performance. The purpose of this review was to critically analyse the current literature investigating the impact of fighting ‘live’ fires on firefighter hydration. METHODS: A systematic search was performed of four electronic databases for relevant published studies investigating the impact of live fire suppression on firefighter hydration. Study eligibility was assessed using strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. The included studies were critically appraised using the Downs and Black protocol and graded according to the Kennelly grading system. RESULTS: Ten studies met the eligibility criteria for this review. The average score for methodological quality was 55 %, ranging from 50 % (‘fair’ quality) to 61 % (‘good’ quality) with a ‘substantial agreement’ between raters (k = .772). Wildfire suppression was considered in five studies and structural fire suppression in five studies. Results varied across the studies, reflecting variations in outcome measures, hydration protocols and interventions. Three studies reported significant indicators of dehydration resulting from structural fire suppression, while two studies found mixed results, with some measures indicating dehydration and other measures an unchanged hydration status. Three studies found non-significant changes in hydration resulting from wildfire firefighting and two studies found significant improvements in markers of hydration. Ad libitum fluid intake was a common factor across the studies finding no, or less severe, dehydration. CONCLUSIONS: The evidence confirms that structural and wildfire firefighting can cause dehydration. Ad libitum drinking may be sufficient to maintain hydration in many wildfire environments but possibly not during intense, longer duration, hot structural fire operations. Future high quality research better quantifying the effects of these influences on the degree of dehydration is required to inform policies and procedures that ensure firefighter health and safety

    The Perfect Firestorm: Bringing Forest Service Wildfire Costs under Control

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    Blessed and cursed by a Congress that gives it a virtual if not literal blank check for fire protection, the Forest Service's fire spending is out of control. Prodded by a centralized planning and budgeting process, the agency's expensive, onesize- fits-all approach to wildfire does not fit the extremely diverse 193 million acres of national forests. The Forest Service's program -- which consists of spending close to 300millionperyeartreatinghazardousfuelsandasmuchas300 million per year treating hazardous fuels and as much as 2 billion a year preparing for and suppressing fires -- will not restore the national forests to health or end catastrophic fire in most of those forests. In many forests it may do more harm than good. Forest Service plans are based on the notion that western national forests suffer from an unnatural accumulation of hazardous fuels. In fact, that is probably true for no more than about 15 percent of those forests. The appropriate treatments on the remaining 85 percent may be as diverse as the forests themselves. Significant structural changes in the Forest Service are essential to control fire costs. Those changes should divorce the agency, or at least its fire program, from Congress's blank check. They should also decentralize decisionmaking so local decisions will respond to local economic and ecological conditions. This paper suggests several possible structural changes, including:Cost-containment programs (effectively the current direction);Focusing efforts on the wildland-urban interface, which is mostly nonfederal land; Relying on private insurance to fund (and control the costs of) emergency fire suppression; Turning national forest fire control over to state and local fire protection districts; Turning national forests into fiduciary trusts funded exclusively out of their own user fees; and Abolishing the Forest Service and turning the lands over to the states. Because the actual situation varies greatly from one region to another, it may be that no one of these solutions will work for all federal lands. To find the solution or solutions that work best, Congress should apply some or all of these alternatives to one or more national forests on an experimental basis. Such experiments will help point the way to future wildfire management

    Upfront - Economic news across the region

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    Various articles on the Federal Reserve 5th District.Economic conditions ; Federal Reserve District, 5th

    A Wildfire Prediction Based on Fuzzy Inference System for Wireless Sensor Networks

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    The study of forest fires has been traditionally considered as an important application due to the inherent danger that this entails. This phenomenon takes place in hostile regions of difficult access and large areas. Introduction of new technologies such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has allowed us to monitor such areas. In this paper, an intelligent system for fire prediction based on wireless sensor networks is presented. This system obtains the probability of fire and fire behavior in a particular area. This information allows firefighters to obtain escape paths and determine strategies to fight the fire. A firefighter can access this information with a portable device on every node of the network. The system has been evaluated by simulation analysis and its implementation is being done in a real environment.Junta de AndalucĂ­a P07-TIC-02476Junta de AndalucĂ­a TIC-570

    The Response of Zigadenus fremontii to Variation in Fire Regime

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    California\u27s chaparral shrub communities are naturally exposed to dry-season fire. It could be reasoned that prescription burns set during the wet season by land managers would have more detrimental effects on plant regeneration than dry season fires because wet season burns are more likely to kill newly emergent seedlings and damage newly emerged leaves of mature plants. Six field sites with flowering Zigadenus fremontii, an herbaceous perennial geophyte common to chapparal and part of the post-fire bloom, were established at Henry W. Coe State Park in Nothern California. Three sites were part of the September 2007 Lick Wildfire and three were part of a February 2007 prescription burn. The sites were monitored for Z. fremontii regeneration over two years. Z. fremontii exposed to the prescription burn fared better than the wildfire plants, with inflorescence height being significantly higher in prescribed burn sites. Bulbs were transplanted into soil from the prescription burn, wildfire, and unburned area to determine differences in regeneration due to soil characteristics. There were no significant differences due to soil types, but only bulbs from the prescription burn sites had the ability to produce flowers in multiple years subsequent to fire. Differences in germination rates between seeds grown in soil from the wildfire, prescription burn, and unburned soil were investigated via a controlled germination experiment. There was a trend for increased germination in burned soils compared to unburned soils. The evidence from this study suggests that geophytes can benefit from fires set outside of the natural fire season of chaparral

    Performance analysis of a self-protection system for vehicles in case of WUI fire entrapment

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    Sheltering inside a civilian vehicle has proved to be a high risk strategy in case of wildfire entrapment. Survival is by no means guaranteed, especially in moderate to high-intensity wildfires. However, vehicles do offer a certain degree of fire protection, which can be reinforced by ad-hoc fire resistant technology. In this paper, we present the experimental performance analysis of a self-protection system that has been designed to protect people’s life in case of fire entrapment. Similar to a firefighter fire shelter, the designed system can be quickly deployed covering the whole vehicle. In case of fire exposure, this fabric provides additional heat protection to the occupants and the vehicle itself. An experimental burning was designed in order to simulate real fire exposure conditions in case of vehicle entrapment in a rural road. An ex-situ 2-m high fuel bed composed of Pinus halepensis fine logging slash was arranged in a 13 m long x 6 m wide area. Fire was ignited at one end of the fuel bed and spread driven by an induced constant air flow (3 m/s midflame wind speed). 2.8 m away from the other fuel bed end, a car covered with the fire protection fabric was placed, parallel to the fire. Data analysis provided mean values of fire rate of spread (2 m/s), fireline intensity (1800 kW/m), flame height (6.5 m), flame tilt angle (30Âș), flame depth (2 m), flame temperature (800 ÂșC) and flame emissive power (47.5 kW/m2 ). Maximum air temperatures inside the vehicle ranged around 41-42.5 ÂșC during a period between 20 min and 35 min after ignition. A thermocouple in contact with the internal side of the driver’s window registered a maximum value of 47.3 ÂșC. These results evidenced the good performance of the fabric when protecting eventual vehicle occupants against thermal exposure from wildfires of moderate intensity.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

    WUI state of the art and regulatory needs in Europe

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    The document summarizes the state of the art of the regulationsrelevant to WUI in Europe, providing an organized set of references to the specific regulatory documents. It is focused on three main relevant topics: i) fuel-reduced fringes; ii) Building codes and standards; iii)Wildland-Industrial Interface. Current regulations are analysed and compared, leading to the identification of important needs and limitations of the current European regulatory frameworkPreprin
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