The new year has arrived, and we in the Public Fire Protection Division have hit the ground running! Bruce Teele retired after 41 years of dedicated service to NFPA and America's first response community. Tom McGowan joined our team on November 3 as a new Senior Emergency Services Specialist and he is joined by Orlando Hernandez, a Senior Emergency Service Specialist who started January 3, bringing our team to full staffing.
Speaking of full staffing, this topic is resonating throughout the fire service like the shot heard round the world. The economic downturn coupled with declining revenues, have resulted in hundreds of communities reducing fire department staffing . The challenge for fire service leaders is to maintain firefighter safety and wellness in the face of these cuts. Training is now needed more then ever to maintain basic firefighting skills, skills that save lives of civilians and firefighters.
NFPA Standards can provide a benchmark for a fire department to measure its capabilities against and then apply it to local conditions, allowing fire officials to construct a statement of risk the proposed budget will expose the community to. You don't have to be an NFPA member to call the Public Fire Protection Division with your questions about NFPA 1710, 1720, or any of our Standards. Call my office at 617-984-7299 or email me.
In other news, comments are due February 11 on a proposed Tentative Interim Amendment (TIA) on NFPA 1801, Thermal Imagers for the Fire Service.
And check out the program of of more than two dozen pre/post-conference seminars will be available in Boston at the NFPA Annual Meeting , June 2011.
Last,learn more about NFPA and electric vehicles with our upcoming NFPA JournalLIVE on line presentation (previously called “WebExtra”), exclusively for NFPA members. Andrew Klock and Ken Willette will present “Charging Up: Five Ways NFPA is Preparing to Meet the EV Boom” on Wednesday, January 26.
Stay safe!
Ken Willette
Comments