Electrical Fire Safety - Case Studies

On December 2018, the Stuart Fire Department was called to a single-vehicle MVA just west of Menlo. The vehicle was a 2001 Chevy Silverado X 2. The vehicle had hit a guard rail and cleared a creek and landed on its top entrapping both patients. Stuart Fire had cribbed around the vehicle and were using rescue jacks to help with the lifting to provide an opening to extricate the patients. There still was no large enough opening to get the patients out the window. Amkus spreaders The rescuers th...

Fike Corporation recently earned the right to protect a large and unique library complex located in Mexico. The library is a four story structure built to house millions of literary volumes, and also includes an auditorium, administrative offices, library stacks and reading rooms. The library also boasts large centralized computer services designed to bring greater computer access to the library visitors. The unique library architecture, high-tech equipment and massive literature collection pre...

Southern Supply Company is a wholesale distributor located in Springfield, Missouri. Southern Supply has a critical data center through which it handles all of its business activity, from shipping and receiving to accounting, for its 12 locations in Missouri and Kansas. Because it is key to the operation of its business, Southern Supply made the decision to protect their data center with a clean agent fire suppression system, rather than just a traditional sprinkler system. By choosing a clean-...

Airport operators around the world rely on the Rosenbauer flagship, since it has set the technical standard in the aircraft fire fighting sectors for years. This is also the case for Finavia in Finland, which will put six identical PANTHER 6x6s into service by the end of the year: five at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, the capitol, and one at Tampere-Pirkkala Airport. Among these is the PANTHER with production number 1500, a minor milestone. A Euro 6 engine is built into the anniversary PANTHER as th...

Pierce Manufacturing Inc., an Oshkosh Corporation company, has announced that it has delivered a custom Pierce Ascendant 107’ Heavy-Duty Aerial Ladder to the City of Cambridge Fire Department in Massachusetts. The new apparatus was sold by New England’s exclusive Pierce dealer, Minuteman Fire and Rescue (Minuteman Trucks, Inc.). Features include a custom Arrow XT chassis, 107' of vertical and 100' of horizontal reach, 16’ stabilizer spread, and 1,500 gpm waterway flow capacity....

WAGNER Rail GmbH, based in Haar near Munich, has installed a fire protection solution in a people mover in Russia for the first time: at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport. Ensuring passenger safety Since May 2018, the so-called Cable Liner has been running fully automatically on a route of around two kilometers, connecting the northern and southern terminal complexes. It is the first Cable Liner to run underground in a tunnel. To make the journey as safe as possible for passengers, the producer,...

A powerful network of C-TEC’s ZFP addressable fire panels is safeguarding Sunbury Manor School in Middlesex. Programmed with sophisticated cause and effects to suit the school’s special requirements, the 4-loop touch-screen control panels connect to a series of detection devices including 250 of C-TEC’s EN54-23 certified visual alarm devices to provide top quality fire protection at the 1025-pupil capacity school. Emergency Lockdown Policy The system also has a lockdown facil...

The South Holland Fire Department, located south of Chicago, Illinois, employs 24 full-time and 19 paid-on-call firefighters. These employees staff two stations 24 hours a day and respond to nearly 4,500 calls annually. The department protects approximately 22,000 residents with a response area comprised of over 8,000 homes, industrial facilities and commercial businesses. Just a few miles to the west, the Midlothian Fire Department, located in the village of Midlothian, Illinois, maintains two...

Abbot Fire Group, working in partnership with Everlux, have successfully completed an installation of low level lighting (LLL) for Hightown Housing Association. Based in nearby Hemel Hempstead, Hightown chose Everlux as the supplier for their LLL requirements having seen a demonstration at the International Firex exhibition earlier this year. The project required Abbot Fire Group to fit low level lighting in three buildings managed by Hightown Housing Association. A total of 1.72 km of low leve...

One of the world’s most famous hotel-chains, DoubleTree by Hilton, part of Hilton Worldwide, has selected a high-performance fire system from industry renowned fire systems provider, Advanced at their eight-story, 366-rooms hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. The challenge was to replace an existing system, integrate speakers to all guest rooms and ensure that all audio messages and strobes were fully synchronized across the hotel, in the event of a fire situation, without the need for costly...

For a volunteer fire department in Ried, leaving gloves, shoes, and boots to air dry is now a thing of the past, thanks to the drying panels from Wintersteiger AG, which have been in use since the beginning of November 2020. Regional Fire Inspector and Fire Chief, Josef Leherbauer is delighted with the successful solution. He said, “To save energy, we chose one small and one large dryer that can be used as required. Both are equipped with different nozzles for gloves and boots. As the dry...

The Elsberry Fire Protection District in Elsberry, Missouri has added additional firefighting power to its fleet with the arrival of two new Toyne apparatus. The pumper and pumper tanker will allow the department to expand its firefighting capabilities. The Elsberry Fire Protection District covers 110 square miles in eastern Missouri. Pumper features Toyne built Elsberry’s pumper tanker and pumper on Spartan Metro Star chassis. Containing the power of Cummins ISL9 450 horsepower engines...

There are many sources of wood as a biomass energy source. Larger pieces can be harvested directly or come as stumps and branches from forest clearing. While smaller chips and sawdust can come from many different industrial processes. Since it is very bulky, wood biomass is normally sourced locally to reduce transportation costs. What is the biggest risk? Biomass in bulk is a dangerous material that can ignite and burn spontaneously, and fine wood dust – which is often generated during t...

Fairview Fire and Rescue in Monroe, North Carolina has increased its fleet’s firefighting power with the purchase of a new Toyne Pumper Tanker. Fairview received the high-capacity apparatus in mid-September. This addition will boost the fire defense of this robust department, which covers a nearly 35-square-mile district in North Carolina. Pumper Characteristics The new pumper tanker, built on a Peterbilt 367, 6x4 drive chassis, is powered by a Cummins ISX 600 horsepower engine and...

The UK’s largest fitness operator has chosen the P50 to protect its 200-plus gyms and more than a million members. Fast-expanding PureGym is installing our multi-use composite P50, the only extinguisher that needs no external servicing contract and can be maintained in-house by trained staff, in its new gyms, with a program to replace metal extinguishers in all its premises. Eliminating the process of “organizing and chasing” external servicing was the driving force behind the...

On September 2, 2018, the world watched as flames engulfed the National Museum of Brazil and 90 percent of its artifacts from around the world. Recovery efforts are still underway, but almost certainly lost were the museum’s massive butterfly and arthropod collections numbering in the millions, a 3,500-year-old Chilean mummy, an 811,500-year-old skull said to be the oldest in existence from the Americas, several dinosaur skeletons, a 2,700-year-old sarcophagus among hundreds of other anci...

Dickinson Rural Fire Department is now home to a fifth Toyne apparatus, after receiving a new pumper in mid-August. The department, located in Dickinson, North Dakota, has been a longtime Toyne customer, and its latest apparatus will help bolster its firefighting efforts in and around the city. Features of Pumper Toyne mounted the pumper on a Freightliner 108SD 4x4 chassis with a two-door cab, adding in the power of a Cummins ISL 380 horsepower engine. Driven by an Allison 3000 EVS transm...

The Yamaha motorcycle factory in Chennai, India, is protecting its employees with a low maintenance, high performance fire alarm system, provided by Hochiki Europe. With a population of 6,000 workers in eight large buildings spread across a vast 147,450m2 site, Yamaha’s building designers faced a challenge when developing a centralised fire safety and emergency lighting network. The distance between the buildings and the number of devices needed made it impossible to use a single control...

Three-and-a-half years on from a destructive fire, which engulfed a plastics manufacturer’s factory with no sprinkler system, in Lancashire, United Kingdom, the lasting effect is undeniable, as the £50 million turn-over business has gone into administration cost cuts, with the loss of 200 jobs. Total Polyfilm site fire The fire at the Total Polyfilm site, located in Bamber Bridge, on May 10, 2016, took 60 firefighters to control and resulted in the total loss of the factory. Nearby...

AENA, the Spanish airports authority, has made a significant reinforcement to its firefighting and emergency capabilities with the addition of 14 Scania P 490 6×6 fire trucks. Each of the vehicles is equipped with a 13-litre Scania engine, and nine of the trucks have superstructures built by Iturri, while five have been built by Rosenbauer. equipped for airport emergencies According to Eurostat, Spain had the third-largest volume of airport traffic in 2017 (after the UK and Germany), wi...

The fire-stopping expertise of Quelfire combined with the installation skills of RA Fire Protection has created a safe, compliant residential development in Skipton. Belle Vue Mills in Skipton, North Yorkshire, is a refurbishment project that will create 39 high-quality apartments. The main contractor at Belle Vue Mills was Triton Construction, which has its head office in Liversedge, West Yorkshire, and a North West regional office in Warrington. Project challenges There were several challen...

Howard County Fire Protection District welcomed a Toyne Pumper Tanker to its fleet this spring, marking the district’s fourth new Toyne apparatus in the last few years. The pumper tanker will increase the firefighting strength of the department, which covers a wide territory in north-central Missouri. Premier Fire Apparatus Built by Toyne, a fire apparatus manufacturer located in Breda, Iowa, Howard County’s pumper tanker was mounted on a Freightliner M2 106 chassis with a two-door...

A key driver in the successful delivery of the UK’s £42.6 billion HS2 project, the new National College for High Speed Rail, is now protected by industry-renowned fire panels from Advanced. National College for High Speed Rail Located in Doncaster, a town historically known for its prominent role in rail engineering and maintenance, the college occupies 76,000 sq. feet of teaching and workshop space, with specialist training installations, including 150 meters of external track and...

Fraport Greece, which operates 14 regional airports in Greece, has ordered ten new Scania fire trucks with Rosenbauer superstructures. The investment will significantly improve the regions’ airport fire safety capabilities. The rescue and firefighting vehicles are being delivered to the airports on the islands of Corfu, Kefalonia, Kos, Mykonos, Mytilini, Rhodes, Samos, Santorini, Thessaloniki and Zakynthos. Together these airports annually handle more than 20 million arriving and departin...

The college occupies 76,000 sq ft of teaching and workshop space, with specialist training installations, including 150 metres of external track and catenary A key driver in the successful delivery of the UK’s £42.6 billion HS2 project, the new National College for High Speed Rail, is now protected by industry-leading fire panels from Advanced. Located in Doncaster, a town historically known for its prominent role in rail engineering and maintenance, the college...

The Ankeny Fire Department added the power of two Iowa-built fire trucks from Toyne Fire Apparatus to its fleet. Toyne delivered the identical pumpers to Ankeny, Iowa’s department in late May, bolstering its response time and firefighting capabilities. Pumper Features Toyne designed Ankeny’s pumpers for strength and reliability, building both bolted stainless steel bodies on the sturdy frame of a Spartan Metro Star LFD chassis with a 10-inch raised roof. The apparatus is driven by...

The Securiton aspirating smoke detection (ASD) system has been selected as the fire protection method for a new cold store to be operated by one of the UK’s major supermarket retailers.  The new 68-truck bay, 30,000 square meter hub in Pineham, near Milton Keynes, is providing a state-of-the-art facility, and has been built alongside an existing 58,000 square meter distribution center to which it will be linked via interconnecting yards. Located next to Junction 15a of the M1 at th...

Most processes in pharmaceutical manufacturing are at low pressure. However, mechanical failures such as line blockages or a pump malfunction can cause a sharp rise in pressure. This risk increases if a heating system is involved, or in a few cases, where strong chemicals could be contaminated and react powerfully. How to protect these systems? 1 – Pressure Relief Valves (PRVs) For non-aseptic applications, pressure relief valves are the first choice. These valves have a metal plate tha...

Hendersonville Fire Department Chief Scotty Bush remembers like yesterday one of the first times he realized the incomparable advantage of battery-powered rescue tools. Five years ago, Chief Bush – who was captain at the time – and his team were called to the scene of a wall collapse; a 25-foot concrete wall had fallen at a construction site with three men underneath. “We had such an issue getting our apparatus to the scene – first to navigate all the construction traffi...

POK S.A.S, founded in 1976, is known worldwide for its high-tech, high-quality fire-fighting equipment. But it should not be forgotten that POK also supplies a very wide range of couplings for many different sectors of activity. These couplings adapt to the standards of many countries and are available in different materials and sizes. This complete range allows POK to serve many industries but also defense and in the first place the SEA. Service des Essences des Armées (SEA) What is t...