I’ve got some unrelated loose-ends to drop on you this morning.  I promise that they won’t take long.  First of all, Monday won’t be disrupted by the Tour de France.  Today is a rest day for the cyclists, and it’s probably a good thing after yesterday’s mountain climbing.  Two hefty ascents in about three hours and one of them was a 7,000-ft.-high monster.  That was their third and final day of their jaunt through the Pyrenees mountains (is that redundant?), so we’ve got a week of relatively flatland stages coming up this week.  But the scenery will be just as great, especially the small towns.

A week from today will be the first stage in the Alps, and that’s where the heightened competition begins, too.  I think the only rider’s name that I’m able to pronounce consistently accurately is “Armstrong.”  I’ve never figured out those colorful tongue-twisters like “Nocentini.”  Is it a hard “c” or a soft “c”?  Doesn’t matter to me.  I just have fun watching those motorcycles weave through the peloton (the what?).

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It’s not just the American car-makers that are undergoing an upheaval these days.  The German car industry is trying to reshape itself, too.  While Daimler-Benz is shedding itself of as many of their unprofitable lines as they can and Opel going down the drain with GM, Volkswagen and Porsche are engaged in flat-out fisticuffs over who’s going to control who.

I don’t pretend to understand it all, nor do I even follow it closely.  So I can only be a bit sketchy about what’s going on.  As I understand it,

• Last year Porsche mounted a concerted bid for a hostile buy out of VW.  It failed.
• Porsche came out of the battle very heavily in debt and holding a bunch of VW shares that it now wants to get rid of.
• Now VW is counter-attacking, offering to take control of Porsche by purchasing 49.9% of the company for just over 4 billion Euros.
• Porsche is so indebted that they will have to sell something to somebody or go under.  But they have refused VW’s offer.
• Enter the Emirate of Qatar, the world’s 2nd-richest oil nation and their new offer of 7 billion Euros for 25% of Porsche plus all of their VW holdings.

Will we be seeing Europe’s two powerhouse auto companies suddenly under the control of an Arab country?  Hard to imagine.  Please don’t quote me on any of this, but if any of you have been following this drama, how about filling the rest of us in on what’s going on there?

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And finally, a little bit of reading for you later on during lunch time.  There’s an interesting  ARTICLE HERE about the growing numbers of “big box” stores that are being vacated and left derelict in shopping centers all across the country.  I’ll not get into the why’s and wherefor’s of it all now, but it raises some flags for firefighters. 

What I’m thinking of primarily is how do you keep up with what is really going on inside these “empty” monoliths?  After the major tenant, like the late Circuit City, moves out, what happens next?  Don’t become lax on your preplanning for these places.  In an effort to salvage something from their investment, some of them may become leased storage facilities loaded up with stock from other businesses that sell an entirely different product.  Do you know what’s in there?

Some of them are being renovated into smaller units in an attempt to revitalize the building.  There may be a lot of construction going on inside that you can’t see because there aren’t any windows!  Sprinklers?   Sure, all of those places were built with sprinkler systems.  But after they’ve been sitting vacant for a couple of years with no maintainence being performed, you can’t rely on them.  But you’d better be checking them out.  It’s all right there, a disaster-in-waiting.  Huge confined area with no ventilation….high ceilings topped off with lightweight trusses …. dubious sprinkler or standpipe connections …. unknown amount of stored materials.  You get the picture.  After you read the article, make up your own list and use it as a drill topic this afternoon.

This morning, though, we need to get the equipment checked out.  I’m late getting the coffee started, so let me get going.  I’ll see you back in the day room.

Are you aware that 12 noon today marks the midpoint of  May already?  It’s been such a cool and wet month for the most part that I don’t get the sense that it’s really that late in the year.

Did you catch our report on Wednesday (HERE) about the Greencastle, Indiana, FD’s program to put identifying stickers on houses built with the wood-chips-and-glue lumber?  If you didn’t, click back and do that now.  It’s a great idea that costs very little and goes a long way to keeping firefighters out of collapsing buildings.  And I’m thinking that it also may start people thinking a little bit before they buy a place like that.  Bringing market pressures into the equation can help convince builders to start being more responsible when it comes to their construction methods.

But what I really liked about the story is that Greencastle has decided to do something about it and quit going to still more meetings and conferences where fire people tell each other what they already know about the hazards of the so-called lightweight construction.  Nothing gets done until you start doing something.  And I applaud the Greencastle FD for bringing this life hazard right out into the public’s view.  We need more action like that.  We’ve been fooling around with this stuff for way too long now.  Let’s grab the pitchforks and march!

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In keeping with this morning’s theme, “The Week of the Moose,” I’ll invite you to watch this home video of a juvenile moose-on-the-loose in a New Hampshire neighborhood yesterday:

Now let’s get the equipment checked out.  I see we need another pot of coffee, so I’ll get that going and see you later in the day room.

One of the constant topics ever since we started this blog nearly two years ago is this practice of using what we call “wood chips and glue” building materials in new construction.  These modern “lightweight construction” methods are not only generating more fire deaths and injuries to both residents and firefighters, but they are accelerating the dollar fire-loss totals by turning a room-and-contents fire into a total loss.

Somehow, sometime, we have got to start hitting the public over the head with the realities of this odious practice that turns homes into tinder boxes.  Somebody up in Milwaukee has gotten some attention.  LightRock found this video report from WISN Ch. 12 that explains the how and why of the floor joist problem.
http://mfile.akamai.com/12894/wmv/vod.ibsys.com/2008/1113/17971947.200k.asx

The 6-minute video report is done very well in that it tells John Q. just what these things are and they even have a fire demonstration with a wood chip joist alongside a solid wood joist.  It’s worth your while to take the time to view it.

The report is focused around a Milwaukee fire captain who recently went through the floor of a burning home and was rescued by one of his firefighters.  It’s a compelling story and is used effectively to base the video report around.  What caught LightRock’s attention was something that we haven’t heard much of before this, and that’s the fact that this near-fatal fire was in a house the looks to be about 70 or 80 years old.  It had been recently renovated and part of the reconstruction was – you guessed it – putting in new floor joists….wood chips and glue in an old house that you would expect to be entirely different on the inside.  There’s a big lesson for us to learn there.

As a side note, this same video finishes up with the “we contacted to local builder’s association” for comment and they responded with the same spiel that all of them do:

• Our products meet all building codes.  This is a stunt to shift the topic away from their culpability.  Nobody has accused them of not following building codes.
• We’re working on developing fire-resistant products.  You mean like solid wood joists?  Drywall / gypsum board?  Just where is all this developing going on?
• We’re working to educate firefighting agencies on how best to fight fires involving the most common building materials used today.  Gimme a break!!!

We need to keep letting people know what’s under their floor.  They don’t know unless we tell them.  This one is a good start.

Now let’s start getting the equipment checked out.  I’ve got to start the coffee.

Talk about an outfit that keeps abreast of new trends and capitalizes on them, how about the U. S. Army?  No sooner did the news come out about the beer from Outer Space (HERE) the other day, then this headline pops up this morning:  Pentagon expanding number of aliens recruited.  Hmm.  What kind of job skills are they looking for, anyway?

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You know, I really wish that all the various fire-related organizations would get together and mount a concerted, coordinated effort to educate the public on the terrible hazards of this so-called lightweight construction of both housing units and commercial occupancies.  I mean all of the organizations, including the NFPA.

The extremely rapid fire-spread that takes place in these buildings is not what is supposed to happen in civilised settlements.  Not only does it put the occupants in a more risky situation, but it greatly increases the amount of fire loss damage.  And I don’t need to tell you about the higher hazard to the firefighters as they are getting caught in these tinder boxes every day.

There was some attempt at promoting home smoke detectors on an industry-wide basis, but it wasn’t really coordinated.  Nor was it consistent on a nationwide basis.  Here we are 30 years later and we still are finding that huge numbers of dwellings don’t have working smoke detectors.  The resistance of the public to maintaing their detectors is twofold.  One, nobody thinks that they are going to have a fire.  It’s only something that they see once in a while on the tv news.  And secondly, most people have never seen a house fire, so they have no personal concept about just how devastating that kind of sudden event can be.

In the case of the lightweight construction problem, we have still a third impediment.  This built-in hazard is provided for in the building codes and those are usually written by people whose self-interest lies in preserving codes that permit the cheapest construction methods possible.  Then the codes are adopted by the legistators, many of whom are beholden to the building industry for one reason or another.

As a result, we now have millions of firefighter-killers out there with more being added every month.  Shouldn’t the IAFF be concerned about that?  Shouldn’t all of us be concerned about that?

Right now we should also be concerned about getting the equipment checked out.  I’ll get some fresh coffee started.

The National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) is still reeling from what hit them on Sunday when 900 fire service people parachuted in to the International Code Council meeting.  After spending a few hours there and voting overwhelmingly to approve the mandatory home sprinkler provision for the next building code edition, most of them left just as quickly and went back home to work.

I don’t think that the NAHB has yet realized that they’ve just been left at the gate on this issue.  The race is on to get back to building safe homes and designs that will minimize fire spread, not increase it.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s Lineup,  the home builders have nobody to blame but themselves for all of this because they just wouldn’t even begin to consider that their shoddy methods, sometimes tagged as “lightweight construction,” were dangerous and irresponsible.

In their weekly newsletter that they published yesterday, the NAHB goes into a foot-stamping pout complaining about the lack of “reasoned discussion” before the vote.  As if there hasn’t already been any “reasoned” discussion going on for the past two or three years on this topic.  There has never been any attempt on the part of the home builders to seek a balanced solution to the problem they created, only obstructions and refusals to compromise.

But their real complaint was revealed yesterday when they slipped up and complained that:

The residential fire sprinkler mandates will provide a sizable financial boon for the fire sprinkler manufacturing industry, which, like NAHB, helped provide funding for building officials to attend the hearings.

In 2005, when there were about 1.65 million new homes constructed at an average 2,340 square feet, sprinkler manufacturers would have reaped about $5.8 billion in revenue, based on average sprinkler costs of $1.50 per square foot, had the sprinkler requirement been in effect.

So there you have it.  Potential billions of dollars will now be going into somebody else’s pockets instead of theirs.  What a pity.  Now there will be hundreds of new businesses started that will be employing thousands of sprinkler installers and spreading all that income into the local economy.  What’s wrong with that?

And you can bet your bippy that with this growing demand for sprinkler valves, piping and specialized heads, that there will be some rapid and postive advances in improving the quality of the product while at the same time bringing the initial cost of the system down.  That’s the marketplace at work.

Now let’s get the fire and rescue place at work and get this equipment checked out.  I need some more coffee.

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Those of you who are on Chief Billy Goldfeder’s Secret List know about the push by many concerned firefighters and fire departments to garner enough votes to insert a mandatory sprinkler clause into the recommended building codes.  (You can read his latest commentary about this and also sign up for the direct emails HERE.)

As expected, the building industry is fighting this measure.  Their primary argument against this is a supposed “cost” factor that will add 4 to 5 thousand dollars to the price of a new home.  They maintain that hardwire smoke detectors are more than adequate for preventing life loss in house fires and have their own set of statistics to bolster their argument.

But all this stuff about smoke detectors is just a diversion to keep the discussion away from the our main concern of firefighter safety, specifically the horrible practice of “lightweight construction.”  With this current method of putting up buildings made out of wood chips and glue along with quick-failing trusses, we are having catastrophic failures more and more with ordinary building fires.

Okay, so everybody got out alive.  But they had to move fast and before everything was over, the whole place was gone.  Is the price of a home fire sprinkler higher than the cost of replacing everything you own?  If the home builders would go back to standard construction practices, then I’d go along with the argument that we could live without the sprinklers in private dwellings.  But as long as they keep throwing up these flimsy fire traps dressed up in vinyl, then for our own safety we’d better keep pushing for the home sprinklers.

We’ve been talking about this for over a year now, and we’ll no doubt keep on.  But right now we’ve got to get this equipment checked out.  And I need some more coffee.

Here it is, another Sunday already.  It’s always so peaceful outside on Sunday mornings.  Let’s hope it stays that way.

The underlying theme of the fire and rescue events this past week seems to have been “safety.”  We didn’t plan it that way, it’s just how events tumbled out.  They seem to batch themselves that way and I always find that fascinating.  Another undercurrent of events has been under the category of “arson,” although we didn’t have nearly the time to get into all of those items that came along.

Maybe we’ll have the chance to wrap those two topics up for a while.  It will be interesting to see what spontaneous topics bubble to the top this week.  And then we’ll be having all the folks coming back home from the F.R.I. in Denver and they’ll be sparking some new discussions on what solutions are being tackled in the administrative levels.  Do you think that “lightweight construction” is still a priority?  We’ll see how that goes.  Personally, I’d like to see much more public effort by both the IAFC and the IAFF, along with the state and local chapters of both, to get that problem turned around.  I just don’t like this idea of firefighters being forced to stay outside and watch houses burn down because the home builder saved a couple of thousand in costs by putting up a wood-chip-and-glue sham of a building.

Anyway, we still have to get this equipment checked out.  I’ll go start the coffee and in a little while we can get the Sunday breakfeast going.  Meanwhile, this week’s photo art will help get our mind off of that August heat that’s building up out there.  See you later in the Day Room.

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