THE ONTARIO PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT announced that beginning in April, 2010, all newly-built apartment and condo buildings higher than 3 stories will have to be sprinklered.

API Group photo

This will bring the provincial building code closer to the levels found in the rest of Canada.  “The experience of other jurisdictions across North America is clear: Residential sprinklers reduce injuries, deaths and property loss due to fire,” says Pat Burke, Fire Marshal of Ontario.

Richard Boyes, president of the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs, said that “Ultimately, we would like to see sprinklers being made mandatory in all new residential units including single-family dwellings, townhouses and low-rise buildings.”

Boyes said Vancouver and Scottsdale, Ariz., both require sprinklers in all residential buildings and there hasn’t been a single fire fatality in either municipality since they mandated them 18 and 22 years ago respectively.

CTV has the STORY.

IN WALES SUNDAY A FIRE ENGINE FROM THE NORTH WALES Fire and Rescue Service was involved in a collision with an auto while responding to another wreck.

There were six firefighters on board the engine from the Aberdyfi station when it crashed and rolled over, injuring two of the FF’s. 

BBC News

A North Wales Fire and Rescue Service spokeswoman said: “Two firefighters have been transferred by ambulance to hospital – one suffering from head injuries and one from leg injuries. It is believed that the people travelling in the car were treated for shock by paramedics at the scene.”

The accident that they were responding to involved a car that was left teetering over a railway embankment.

The North Wales Daily Post has the full STORY.

FATAL FALLS FROM TOWERS OF ALL KINDS, water, communications, electric, in the U. S. totalled 10 in number last year.

This year there were none for the first three months, then over a span of 5 weeks there were 6 deaths on cell-phone towers alone.  Five of them were during a 12-day span and half of the six were AT&T contractors.

Wireless Estimator photo

A lot of people are speculating that AT&T has been pressuring the tower workers to work faster in order to meet a June deadline for enhanced service capability for Apple’s iPhone project.

Fortune Magazine reports:

On May 21, AT&T issued a press release describing its $20 billion roll-out of a nationwide 3G network. It promised to have 275 of the markets it serves in the U.S. 3G-ready by the end of June, and to finish the remaining 75 by the end of the year.  AT&T is the exclusive U.S. carrier for Apple’s iPhone. A new, 3G version of that device is widely expected to be released in June.

A spokesman for AT&T Mobile confirms that Jonathan Guilford was working on a tower for an AT&T 3G network, but denies that his death or the others had anything to do with the June deadline. “That is a software upgrade,” says William Marks. “You go to each tower and use a laptop to perform the upgrade at the base station at the bottom of the tower. There is no need to climb towers.”

What he didn’t say, however, is that the workers have to climb the towers to trouble-shoot any problems.  After all, they were up there before they fell.

Read the complete Fortune Magazine article HERE.

THE INVESTIGATION INTO THE TULSA, OKLAHOMA, fire engine rollover Tuesday (Firegeezer report HERE) concludes that speed was a factor leading up to the accident but a dip in the road is what caused the truck to go out of control.

Tulsa World

The driver told police that he hit a dip in the road which caused him to lose control and then it started to roll. The front tires lifted off the ground, and the truck went sideways before overturning and striking the poles and the pickup, he said.

A witness said that it went into the northbound lane before going back across the road and hitting the guardrail on the west side of the road. After it hit the guardrail it then struck two utility poles, a stop sign and a pickup that was parked in a driveway.

The Tulsa World has the STORY.

Channel 23 has a brief video report:

 

TAKING AUTOMOBILE CRASH TESTS TO NEW LEVELS, THE SAAB auto division of General Motors ran a series of tests using human cadavers for the “passengers.”

Claes Tingvall, a car safety specialist with the Swedish Road Administration, told the newspaper Expressen that GM recently finished a multi-year research project in which dead human bodies were used.  He said that for certain things, only real human bodies will suffice.  However, he stressed that they only used bodies that had been donated by the people themselves before they died.

Tingvall explained that the cadavers were also used in experiments that helped in the development of better crash test dummies.  (That’s what he said, folks. - ed.)

The Swedish online paper The Local has the STORY.

AN EARLY-MORNING FIRE SATURDAY IN ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND, has left three Montgomery County firefighters in the Washington, D. C. burn unit.

The fire was on the second floor of a 3-story garden apartment building and was fatal to the sole occupant of the unit. 

The firefighters were on the third story when the floor gave way dropping them into the fire apartment.  They managed to get over to a window where they jumped out of the building.

WUSA Channel 9’s Dave Statter is reporting the fire and keeping his website STATter911 updated with the latest HERE.

Chief Billy Goldfeder has passed along the following:

The IAFC Safety, Health and Survival Section along with FFCC has been asked to assist NIOSH in researching of any factual details related to catastrophic malfunctions or failures of aerial ladder waterways, within the past 30 years. If you have any case specific details and contact information, please advise.

Just send along your contact information to us and we will pass it along just as soon as we find out the right address.  The two key points to note are “waterways” and “past 30 years.”

Thanks,
Firegeezer

 Updated, scroll down.

AN EARLY REPORT FROM THE MELBOURNE HERALD-SUN TELLS:

A Country Fire Authority volunteer is believed to have suffered serious injuries after a fire tanker rolled and collided with a semi-trailor north of Melbourne and then rolled over.

The crash happened on the south-bound lanes of the Hume Fwy at Clonbinane, near Kilmore, about 12.20pm.

A Victoria Police spokesperson said the driver of the fire truck, from the Wallan CFA brigade, was being airlifted to Melbourne with what was believed to be serious injuries.  Update:  A spokesman for The Alfred hospital said the man was in a serious but stable condition.   The driver of the semi-truck was not injured.

Reported from  The Age.

A 27-YR.-OLD WOMAN WAS KILLED SATURDAY MORNING WHEN the car she was driving collided with a New York City fire engine that was responding to a house fire.

NY Daily News photo

The car and the fire engine met at an intersection that has a 4-way Stop sign.  A witness says that the car only stopped for a second and then pulled out into the path of the fire engine that had its lights and siren in operation along with the air horns.

The truck slammed into the driver’s side door, crushing it in and shoving the car about 90 feet down the street.

 Two of the six firefighters are hospitalized with serious injuries and the other four are being held with minor injuries.

IN ERIE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, THE DEPUTY CHIEF OF THE LAWRENCE PARK TOWNSHIP VFD died on the fireground Tuesday evening while working on a commercial fire.

Michael D. Crotty

FirefighterCloseCalls has the initial report HERE:

The Deputy Chief of the Lawrence Park Township VFD (Erie County, PA) Mike Crotty, was tragically killed in the Line of Duty early (Tuesday) evening at a working industrial building fire. Companies were on the mutual aid run, for the working factory fire to the Harbor Creek VFD, when for a yet undetermined reason, the Lawrence Park aerial ladder had a catastrophic failure when a portion of the waterway and master stream separated from the main ladder, falling, striking the Deputy Chief, who was operating in a command role. Initial reports are that the device had a pinnable waterway and it was flowing water at the time of the failure.

The Erie Times-News reports that the fire involved stacks of wood and plastic pallets outside of the Port Erie Plastics company.

Erie Times-News / Janet Campbell photo

Chief Crotty was transported by LifeStar helicopter to the hospital where he was declared dead at 4:56 pm.  He was also a career firefighter at the Erie Bureau of Fire stationed at Engine 6.  He was appointed to the Bureau just this past January.

The Times-News has a video of the 8 pm news conference HERE.
The latest print report from the Times-News is HERE.
WSEE-TV has a good VIDEO REPORT.

Update:  The Erie Times-News is reporting that the Pennsylvania State Police have begun an investigation into the accident.  They are interviewing witnesses and recreating operation.  State Police Sgt. Jim Rogers says that it is standard procedure whenever there is a fatal accident, even if there has been no crime committed.

The autopsy is also being carried out today.

Update #2:  The Times-News is also reporting that the police are taking witnesses reports that say Crotty was struck in the back by a piece of equipment that fell off of the aerial ladder.  Some reports say that it was a piece of the water piping that runs underneath the ladder.
 

Lawrence Park Fire Hall
(L. P. Township photo)

Lawrence Park VFD WEBPAGE.

A MAJOR FIRE AT A FORMER CEMENT PLANT IN SUSSEX, ENGLAND, brought 80 firefighters from across the county to fight the blaze.  Seven of them were re-routed to the hospital when two engines collided while responding to the alarm.

The Mid Sussex Times reports:

TWO fire engines collided en route to the old Shoreham cement works.  One was left with a shattered windscreen and what a fire service spokesman called “significant damage”.

Both fire engines, from Worthing fire station’s Green Watch, had been called to the cement works, on the A283 Steyning Road, Upper Beeding, at 9.15pm last night (Monday, April 7).

Seven of the nine crew members were taken to Worthing Hospital for precautionary checks for whiplash injuries. All have now been discharged.

The fire kept the FD busy throughout the night and is believed to have started in an old workshop currently being used as an auto repair and spray painting facility.

The Shoreham Herald has a brief report on the FIRE.

(Firegeezer notes:  Since the suspected fire-setters are probably covered with cement dust, police are looking for two hardened criminals.)

THERE IS A BREAKTHROUGH DEVELOPMENT in the automotive tire industry.  The designer is calling it the Self Inflating Tire, or SIT.

There is a small air chamber built into the bead of the sidewall that receives atmospheric air and uses the weight of the car to compress the chamber and force the air into the tire itself.  After the tire is repressurized to its normal level, a check valve closes and leaves the air pressure at its nominal setting.

Since almost all tires will gradually lose some pressure over time, this design will maintain the correct amount with the resulting savings on lower fuel costs and especially the preservation of the designed life-span of the tire that can be shortened measurably by under-inflation.

CODA Development’s SIT website explains more fully how the system works and they also have an informative 2-minute video that shows a graphic display of the operation HERE.

Firegeezer says:  If this turns out to be as good as it looks, then I would expect all passenger cars to be equipped with this tire within the next 8 - 10 years, joining the Forever Battery in the march to the maintenance-free car.