Overview Video Released for Training Fire Exposures from the Source Research Project
The Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI), part of UL Research Institutes is proud to release this video overview of the Training Fires from the Source: Developing a Risk-Benefit Framework research project. FSRI Research Engineers, Gavin Horn and Keith Stakes, share a behind-the-scenes look at the types of measurements and experiments underway that will provide fact-based guidance on training fuel and training environment selections that can be made by fire training academies across the country.
Filming took place during research experiments conducted in FSRI’s fire behavior lab at the Delaware County Emergency Services Training Center in Delaware County, PA in 2021. Several members of the project’s technical panel attended the experiments and are featured in the piece. The purpose of this research project is to examine the live-fire training environments with a focus on the effectiveness of high-level training control measures including the tradeoffs between risks and benefits of using different fuels and props. The goal is to equip the fire service so they can make informed decisions about training fuel selection and prop type and operation to balance contamination control with high quality training, which provides an immediate, actionable outcome for the fire service to implement.
“The research that we’re doing here is going to be far reaching in the fire service. There’s benefit in going into fires and seeing how fires react versus the exposure we get from being in those fires – either the instructors or the students themselves – so it’s really important research and we can get the data to really make informed decisions,” said Joanne Rice, technical panel member and Assistant Director Florida Division of State Fire Marshal.
“Parts of the study focus on laboratory-based testing and looking at fuels in very controlled laboratory-bench scale test experimentation to understand products of combustion from each of these different fuels,” said Horn. “We’re also going to look at larger, multiple compartment training structures, to try to understand if we can scale the experiments from the lab to a single compartment fire behavior lab up to multiple fire compartment training structures, many of which are common throughout the United States” he added.
“The purpose of the different stages of this project is to gather as much information as possible to really paint the picture of what an exposure would look like to both students and instructions,” said Stakes. “We are also evaluating thermal conditions inside the training prop based on the different training fuels.”
Training Fire Exposures from the Source: Developing a Risk-Benefit Framework (Training Fuels Framework) is a DHS/FEMA AFG supported project. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this research update are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of DHS/FEMA AFG.
