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Funded through a FEMA - Assistance to Firefighters Grant program for Research, the Polytechnic institute of NYU has teamed up with Fire Department of New York City (FDNY) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop wind driven high rise fire fighting procedures. The research is focused towards improving the safety of fire fighters and civilians by controlling or driving away the smoke and heat. These efforts foster the blending of scientific lexicon in Fire service culture.
Firefighters risk their lives to protect civilians every day, and this study is aiming towards enhancing their skills to accomplish that mission. Wind driven fires in high-rise building presents one of the most dangerous environments that a firefighter can face. With increasing concentration of high rise buildings, development of new fire fighting procedures and review of existing fire fighting techniques is the necessity of today’s fire service.
Experimenting the fire fighting procedures in same high rise fire scenarios is the best way to educate and train fire fighters for enhancing their skills to combat such extreme conditions. Hence, a series of live controlled burn experiments were conducted at seven-story abandoned building on Governor’s Island, NY in February 2008. The main goal of these controlled burn experiments was to test three different techniques to fight high rise fires under wind driven conditions and give better understanding of how to control the flow of fire and smoke while operating at high rise fires. The results of this week-long series of burn experiments were witnessed by many representatives from major fire departments across North America, including the Chicago Fire Department, LA County Fire Department, the Boston Fire Department, the Denver Fire Department, the Boise Fire department, Washington D.C. Fire Department, the Ottawa Fire Service and many other departments. The event was recorded, manifested and published by many news papers and TV channels. (click here to see the respective NY times article)
The impact of this research study on fire service can be seen by FDNY’s movement towards Pilot Program for implementation of fire fighting procedures in real practice. The results of the study called fire officials to review the existing procedures and train the fire fighters for new fire fighting procedures developed by researchers.
Polytechnic Institute of NYU is looking forward to develop this research study for improving national fire service and saving lives of fire fighters and civilians.
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