Notable events
Apart from the usual calls on campus, the UC Santa Cruz Fire Department has responded to many fires on campus. The most notable events are:
4/15/2010: The campus fire department responded to the report of smoke/flame in the construction site adjacent to the new addition to McHenry Library. Upon arrival, crews noticed heavy smoke coming from the 2nd floor of the construction site. [4] Additional crews were requested from the Santa Cruz Fire Department for mutual aid. The new addition to the library was promptly evacuated, and lead to the closure of the library for at least a week to clear out smoke damage, etc. The fire was extinguished within an hour of it breaking out. The two-alarm fire was caused by an overheated extension cord being used by the construction site workers. No major injuries were reported, with the only minor injury being a security guard on the construction site who suffered from minor smoke inhalation.
5/7/2009: The campus fire department responded to a report of the fire, with a subsequent fire alarm activation, at the Physical Science's Building. Campus crews and crews from neighboring fire departments arrived just after 2:00pm to discover a smaller contained fire in a lab on the third floor, which was extinguished almost immediately upon discovery. [5] The fire was ignited with a half-full bottle of hexane, which was being used by two graduate students at the time. The county hazardous materials team stayed throughout the duration of the afternoon to determine air quality in the lab and building. It was determined at 4:15pm that it was safe for people to re-enter the building. No injuries were reported.
1/11/2002: The campus fire department responded to a heat sensor activation at the Sinsheimer Labs around 5:30am. Upon arrival, crews noticed smoke and flame coming from a lab on the 4th floor in the south wing. [6] A report was put it for mutual aid from neighboring departments, including the County Haz-Mat team. The fire destroyed the lab in which it originated in, and most of a neighboring lab. Reconstruction had to be done on that portion of the building. Because there were no fire sprinklers in the building at the time (only a fire detection system) [7] , a high demand for the building to be retrofitted with sprinklers lead to the installation of them in months following the fire. There was no cause determined, but it was speculated that a small piece of equipment may have overheated causing the fire. No injuries were reported.
10/1999: The campus fire department responded to a fire alarm activation and report of a fire in the Sinsheimer Labs around 5:00pm. Crews were called in from neighboring departments, including the County Haz-Mat team. The fire was caused by improper handling of a flammable solvent, Cyclohexane. The solvent was spilled on the floor by a graduate student who accidentally knocked it over while conducting an experiment with a fellow lab student. Instead of the students requesting help with the spill, they attempted to contain the spill themselves. However, the spill had gone under a few of the lab appliances, igniting a flash-fire which only lasted for a short while. There was minimal damage as a result, including some melted floor tiles and other objects. The only injury reported was by one of the graduate students working in the lab, who received first and second degree burns to the face and forearms.
The University of California, Santa Cruz is a public research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of 10 campuses in the University of California system. Located 75 miles (120 km) south of San Francisco at the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the campus lies on 2,001 acres (810 ha) of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Monterey Bay.
A firefighter is a rescuer extensively trained in firefighting, primarily to extinguish hazardous fires that threaten life, property and the environment as well as to rescue people and animals from dangerous situations.
The New York City Fire Department, officially the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY), is a department of the government of New York City that provides fire protection, technical rescue services, primary response to biological, chemical, and radioactive hazards, and emergency medical services responses to the five boroughs of New York City.
The MGM Grand fire occurred on Friday, November 21, 1980 at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Paradise, Nevada. The fire killed 85 people, most through smoke inhalation. The tragedy remains the deadliest disaster in Nevada history, and the third-deadliest hotel fire in modern U.S. history, after the 1946 Winecoff Hotel fire in Atlanta that killed 119 people and the San Juan Dupont Plaza Hotel fire on December 31, 1986, in which 97 perished.
The National Personnel Records Center fire of 1973, also referred to as the 1973 National Archives fire, was a fire that occurred at the Military Personnel Records Center in Overland, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, on July 12, 1973, striking a severe blow to the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States. MPRC, the custodian of military service records, lost approximately 16–18 million official military personnel records as a result of the fire.
The Chicago Fire Department (CFD) provides fire suppression, rescue services and emergency medical response services to the city of Chicago, Illinois, United States, under the jurisdiction of the Mayor of Chicago. The Chicago Fire Department is the third largest municipal fire department in the United States after the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) and Cal Fire, as measured by sworn personnel. It is also one of the oldest major organized fire departments in the nation.
Firefighting jargon includes a diverse lexicon of both common and idiosyncratic terms. One problem that exists in trying to create a list such as this is that much of the terminology used by a particular department is specifically defined in their particular standing operating procedures, such that two departments may have completely different terms for the same thing. For example, depending on whom one asks, a safety team may be referred to as a standby, a RIT or RIG or RIC, or a FAST. Furthermore, a department may change a definition within its SOP, such that one year it may be RIT, and the next RIG or RIC.
A fire alarm control panel (FACP), fire alarm control unit (FACU), or simply fire alarm panel is the controlling component of a fire alarm system. The panel receives information from devices designed to detect and report fires, monitors their operational integrity and provides for automatic control of equipment, and transmission of information necessary to prepare the facility for fire based on a predetermined sequence. The panel may also supply electrical energy to operate any associated initiating device, notification appliance, control, transmitter, or relay. There are four basic types of panels: coded panels, conventional panels, addressable panels, and multiplex systems.
This is a glossary of firefighting equipment.
Fire protection is the study and practice of mitigating the unwanted effects of potentially destructive fires. It involves the study of the behaviour, compartmentalisation, suppression and investigation of fire and its related emergencies, as well as the research and development, production, testing and application of mitigating systems. In structures, be they land-based, offshore or even ships, the owners and operators are responsible to maintain their facilities in accordance with a design-basis that is rooted in laws, including the local building code and fire code, which are enforced by the Authority Having Jurisdiction.
The Jack Baskin School of Engineering is the school of engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It consists of six departments: Applied Mathematics, Biomolecular Engineering, Computational Media, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Statistics.
Active fire protection (AFP) is an integral part of fire protection. AFP is characterized by items and/or systems, which require a certain amount of motion and response in order to work, contrary to passive fire protection.
A fire alarm system has a number of devices working together to detect and warn people through visual and audio appliances when smoke, fire, carbon monoxide or other emergencies are present. These alarms may be activated automatically from smoke detectors, and heat detectors or may also be activated via manual fire alarm activation devices such as manual call points or pull stations. Alarms can be either motorized bells or wall mountable sounders or horns. They can also be speaker strobes which sound an alarm, followed by a voice evacuation message which warns people inside the building not to use the elevators. Fire alarm sounders can be set to certain frequencies and different tones including low, medium and high, depending on the country and manufacturer of the device. Most fire alarm systems in Europe sound like a siren with alternating frequencies. Fire alarm electronic devices are known as horns in the United States and Canada, and can be either continuous or set to different codes. Fire alarm warning devices can also be set to different volume levels.
Vancouver Fire Rescue Services (VFRS) was founded in 1886 and today serves the city of Vancouver, British Columbia providing fire, medical first response, rescue and extrication services. In 2017, VF&RS responded to 67,000 emergency calls.
The Wincrest Nursing Home fire took place on Friday, January 30, 1976, in Chicago, United States. The fire occurred when an arsonist set a wardrobe closet on fire at the Wincrest Nursing Home building, located at 6326 N. Winthrop Avenue. The alarm sounded at 11:30 a.m. and the fire was put out at 1:30 p.m. Although the building itself sustained minor smoke, fire and water damage, 23 people died from smoke inhalation. A 21-year-old housekeeper was arrested by authorities and was charged with multiple counts of arson.
Police departments in the University of California system are charged with providing law enforcement to each of the system's campuses.
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) Coastal Science Campus consists of five main institutions: UCSC's Long Marine Laboratory, UCSC's Coastal Biology Building, the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, and the Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center. The physical location of the campus is at the western end of Santa Cruz, California, roughly 10 minutes away from UCSC's main campus, and is located adjacent to the Younger Lagoon Reserve. Walking trails exist throughout the campus and are used by area residents for walking, biking, and bird watching.
In emergency services, mutual aid is an agreement among emergency responders to lend assistance across jurisdictional boundaries. This may occur due to an emergency response that exceeds local resources, such as a disaster or a multiple-alarm fire. Mutual aid may be ad hoc, requested only when such an emergency occurs. It may also be a formal standing agreement for cooperative emergency management on a continuing basis, such as ensuring that resources are dispatched from the nearest fire station, regardless of which side of the jurisdictional boundary the incident is on. Agreements that send closest resources are regularly referred to as "automatic aid agreements".
One Meridian Plaza was a 38-story high-rise office building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The 492-foot (150-meter) tower was designed by Vincent Kling & Associates and completed in 1972. The building was demolished in 1999, as a result of damage of a fire that began on February 23, 1991. The fire began on the 22nd floor and raged out of control for hours. An investigation of the fire, led by the Office of the Fire Marshal of the City of Philadelphia with assistance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' (ATF) national investigative response team, determined the blaze started after linseed oil–soaked rags ignited. Philadelphia firefighters fought the blaze, but struggled due to a lack of power in the skyscraper and insufficient water pressure from the building's standpipes. Three firefighters died in the twelve-alarm fire after becoming disoriented by heavy smoke. Firefighting efforts inside One Meridian Plaza eventually were abandoned, due to fears the structure would collapse. The fire was only brought under control once it reached the 30th floor, which was one of the few floors that had automatic sprinklers installed. Ten sprinklers held back the fire until it started burning itself out and was finally brought under control almost a full day after it started. The blaze seriously damaged the building, destroying eight floors and damaging neighboring buildings.
The Baltimore City Fire Department (BCFD) provides fire protection and emergency medical services to the city of Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1797 and established in 1859, the Baltimore City Fire Department covers an area of 81 square miles (210 km2) of land and 11 square miles (28 km2) of water, with a resident population of over 640,000 and a daytime population of over 1,000,000. The BCFD responds to approximately 235,000 emergency calls annually. There are two International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) locals; IAFF 734 for firefighters and IAFF 964 for officers.
