I was reading an article (HERE) about a police raid on a flea market over the Labor Day weekend. It took place in Hillsville, Virginia, a small mountain town in the SW corner of the state that holds a big flea market and gun show every Labor Day that brings visitors from a wide area, and because of that there are several hundred dealers set up in the market.
Acting on tips and past experience, the Virginia State Police had 12 special agents visit the show on the first day of the 4-day event looking for counterfeit merchandise. “We were just mainly looking for vendors who were selling expensive hand-bags, watches and jewelry,” (State Police Sgt. Michael) Conroy said. “If someone was selling a designer purse for $25 that would ordinarily sell for several hundred dollars in a store, that’s something we were looking into.”
After doing their preliminary scouting around the setup, they went back and arrested 10 vendors who were selling large quantities of knock-offs. After going through the on-site booking procedure, the police next seized the suspected counterfeit goods and literally filled a 40-ft. trailer with the contraband evidence that had an estimated value of $2.5 million. What caught my attention in this story was that one of the vendors was arrested for selling electrical supplies that had fake Underwriter’s Laboratories (UL) labels on them. “We found a surge protector that had a counterfeit UL label,” Conroy said. “If someone installed it in a home and it caused a fire, it could have resulted in a loss of life and destruction of property.”
That triggered a faint light in my memory bank. I recall reading something a couple of years ago about all these cheap, counterfeit goods that are pouring out of Communist China and flooding Americans stores, and one of the serious issues was the proliferation of electrical goods with the phony UL labels on them. A huge outlet for these items, mostly extension cords and similar things like the aforementioned surge protector, are the so-called “dollar stores” that have sprung up around the country.
That leads me to further wonder just how are fire departments equipped to identify and deal with counterfeit UL -tagged products? How widespread is it? I think I’ll start looking into this for a little while and see what’s going on with it. Meanwhile, I know that many of our readers work in fire marshal offices, so I’d appreciate it if you’d let us know, either in the Comments or by email, if your FM is doing anything to identify and remove these inherent hazards. How do you spot them? Is there an ongoing inspection program where you look for them? Inquiring minds want to know.
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After you finish up here, make sure that you scroll down to the next posting and read FossilMedic’s announcement. After a tedious process, the 2nd edition of his book Fire Officer: Principles and Practice jointly published by IAFC and the NFPA is now available for purchase. For some unfathomable reason they didn’t put his name on the cover, but it’s on the inside along with about 18 months of hard work and I want to take a moment to offer Mike a hearty “Congratulations !!” for bringing the project to fruition. After you read his brief description of the contents, I’m sure that many of you will want to get a copy for your own career enhancement, both paid and volunteers.
It is officially released for sale tomorrow, but you can pre-order it now by clicking on the Amazon.com link that we have at the end of the posting. And don’t forget to order one for the station library, too!
Now let’s get this equipment checked out. I’ve got to get the coffee started.
