One of the most important fire, security, electrical and life safety events of the year – the NFPA Conference & Expo – is held in Chicago, USA, Monday, June 8th through Thursday, June 11th, at McCormick Place, 2301 More than 5,000 fire and life safety professionals are expected to attend.

If the definition of a highrise is 12 floors or more, then statistics show that there are currently over 120,000 highrise buildings around the world today. Firefighters and fire safety engineers alike are crying out for a risk-free way to handle evacuations from these types of buildings. Help is on the way, because Paul Monks of Dutch-based RVES is developing LifeSlide, a revolutionary new product that will put evacuees safely back on the ground in a matter of minutes.

Escape stairs and routes – coupled with the correct response of those in the buildings – save lives, as the World Trade Centre attack showed. Over 12,000 people were evacuated from the towers before they collapsed. Pat Cox highlights some of the lessons learned.

Major industrial accidents have a huge impact on legislation. Ann-Marie Knegt met Thierry Tixier and Xavier Quayzin of APSYS, a risk assesment company that specialises in the high-risk industry.

David Owen, Business Development Manager for fire protection specialist Firemain Engineering, outlines a specific scenario and a best-practice approach for dealing with special hazard risk assessments.

There is very little information on heat and flame protective PPE available to users other than from manufacturers and suppliers who naturally promote their products for sale. As a result, such information is restricted to the direction of the products that are being promoted, and the knowledge (or lack of it) of the sales person trying to promote it. Alec Feldman of Fulcrum Consultants, the executive arm of JOIFF, writes about some JOIFF initiatives taken recently to counter this potentially dangerous status quo.

At the cutting-edge of industrial fire training a systematic approach and some world-class facilities are required. With 35,000 students per year going through Falck Risc’s gates in Rotterdam, it must be doing something.

Alan N Beard, Civil Engineering Section, School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh), outlines some of the worrying factors surrounding the use of computer models for fire safety design.

When Terberg Techniek turned its expertise to the design of an airport firefighting crash tender, it started with no preconceptions. The result is a revolutionary ARFF vehicle that takes performance standards to a new level.

Size can be deceptive. The new Stinger Q4Rapid Intervention Vehicle might look small, but it has been designed to measure itself against giants.

Hollywood certainly hasn’t helped promote the use of sprinklers among many building owners and developers. Images of the “hero” escaping some villainous pursuer by setting off the sprinkler system throughout a building after applying a cigarette lighter to a sprinkler head are not only misleading, but help perpetuate the myths that these systems are unreliable and damaging to business. Pat Cox gets tough on some prevailing misconceptions.

Would you like to know what the fire conditions are behind that closed door? Who wouldn’t want better situational awareness? Jonathan Gilbert, Business Development Manager at Tyco Safety Products, introduces IFJ to a new range of intelligent addressable panels.

For First Hydro Company (a joint venture between International Power plc & Mitsui & Co), operators of Dinorwig Power Station in North Wales, there was an additional factor to take into account when they needed to upgrade the existing conventional fire detection system to meet current safety requirements. Known to thousands of visitors as Electric Mountain, Dinorwig Power Station is situated deep underground, inside Elidir Mountain close to Snowdonia National Park.

After it became known that Halon was to be decommissioned in Europe on 31/12/2003, a large refinery (let’s call it “Refinery1”) in the south of the Netherlands was required to find a replacement fire protection and detection system for its 30 floating roof tanks.

Recognising the need to have validated data on the risks associated with fires in large, open top floating roof storage tanks, 16 oil companies joined together to form a project group to thoroughly investigate these facilities. The project was known as LASTFIRE.

For the fire protection and fire prevention industries, the last decade has certainly witnessed some major events and change that will impact on these business sectors for the next decade to come. Here are just a few of the events that have introduced change in ABC MacIntosh since 1999 and all of the following have caused our business to pause and assess the implications for future development.

Fire fighting operations almost always represent a balance between extinguishing fire, saving of human life or property, or otherwise resolving the incident – for example dealing with a hazardous materials spill – and the impact of these operations on the environment.

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The UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Environment Agency (the EA) are to prosecute five companies following the explosions and fire at the Buncefield Oil Storage Depot.