Stay ConnectedThe NFPA Podcast is the place for safety professionals to stay up to speed on the fast-paced world of electrical, fire, and life safety. Hear in-depth conversations with people out in the field about how they are confronting new challenges and staying on top of emerging technologies to keep the world safe. Listen the second and fourth Tuesday of every month.
Email jroman@nfpa.org to send feedback or recommend a topic for future episodes.
In even the most destructive wildfires, some structures survive untouched while everything around them is incinerated. It begs the question: What factors are most responsible for determining if a home is destroyed or survives during these events? A team of researchers spent years trying to answer that important question. They gathered massive troves of data from California's most destructive wildfires, then used artificial intelligence machine learning to analyze what factors make the biggest difference in home survivability. On today's podcast, we talk to wildfire researcher and study co-author Michael Gollner about what the team found out, how they did it, and how this valuable information will be used. We also discuss whether AI is changing the way we study and think about wildfire.
LINKS:
Read the wildfire research paper we discussed in this episode. Read the NFPA Journal article about this project Learn more about the Firewise USA program at NFPA
The fire protection engineering profession is in a strange place right now. For one thing, there's a growing global shortage of FPEs just as demand for their services is surging. Factors such as accelerating technology, global building booms, and intensifying natural disasters are making their work more challenging than ever. And on top of that, some predict that artificial intelligence will completely alter how FPEs do their jobs over the next decade.
Today on the podcast, I talk about all of this with Bill Koffel, a veteran fire protection engineer and director of the new online fire protection engineering program at the University of Maryland. We discuss Maryland's effort to expand access to FPE training, how the FPE profession is evolving, the challenges of attracting and educating the next generation, and what role AI might play in all of this for good and for bad.
LINKS: A new NFPA Journal cover story on this topic will be out soon! Look for it online and in the upcoming Winter 2025 issue.
Learn more about the University of Maryland's online degree program in fire protection engineering
Not long ago, a dirty, sooty turnout coat and helmet was a badge of honor in the fire service—tangible proof that a firefighter was in the action. But as concern grew about the high levels of cancer in the fire service, that culture has totally flipped. Now, fire departments around the world are going to great lengths to ensure that their members never have to wear a uniform covered in carcinogens. But to do that, you need to know when it's actually clean. That isn't as easy as it sounds. For the past 10 years, PPE expert Jeff Stull has helped lead a Fire Protection Research Foundation project focused on answering those questions. Stull joins the podcast today to discuss the complexities of figuring out how clean is clean, the impacts the project has had on firefighter health, and what further research needs to be done as we move into the next generation of PPE. LINKS: Read Jeff Stull's NFPA Journal Feature story about the project and its impacts Read the project's scope, aims, and final reports Learn more about the new NFPA 1850
Fire Prevention Week, which runs this year from October 5–11, is the longest running public safety observance in United States history. This year for the first time, the Fire Prevention Week theme will focus on lithium-ion battery safety. Even as the technology has become ubiquitous in modern life, the general public still remains largely unaware of the significant fire safety risks that batteries can pose.
Today on the podcast we talk to Kelly Ransdell, NFPA's director of public education, and Brian O'Connor, a technical services engineer at NFPA, about why NFPA is highlighting lithium-ion battery safety, why batteries have become such a prevalent home fire hazard, and what key safety points the public and fire educators need to know.
Links:
Visit the Fire Prevention Week website for tipsheets, campaign materials, and other resources
See additional campaign resources at fpw.org/battery
Read an NFPA Journal feature story on the emerging hazards of consumer lithium-ion batteries and how it impacts the fire service
On January 19, 2000, Shawn Simons and Alvaro Llanos, then 18-year-old freshman roommates at Seton Hall University, were severely burned when the residence hall they lived in caught fire. The blaze, one of the worst at a college campus in U.S. history, killed three students and injured nearly 60 others. Shawn and Alvaro now travel the country speaking to students and responders about their journey. Today on the podcast, we chat with them about the Seton Hall fire, their grueling recovery, and what parents, students, and first responders need to know as students return to campuses this month. This episode first aired in September 2022.
LINKS: NFPA assets and information on campus fire safety and Campus Fire Safety Month The Center for Campus Fire Safety Learn more about Shawn Simons and Alvaro Llanos and see clips from the documentary, "After the Fire"
If you have questions, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hello, you can reach The NFPA Podcast at podcast@nfpa.org.
In October 2023, a 40-year-old man armed with semi-automatic rifle opened fire inside a bowling alley and later at a nearby restaurant in the small city of Lewiston, Maine. Between the two incidents, 18 people died and 13 were injured. Disturbingly, the Lewiston shooting was one for more than 650 mass shootings in the United States in 2023, defined as a shooting event with four or more victims. With the U.S. continuing to experience hundreds of these incidents every year, police, fire, EMS, and organizations like the American Red Cross are refining how they prepare and respond to these incidents. On today's podcast, we talk with John Montes, who led the Red Cross's response and recovery efforts in Lewiston and was also instrumental in developing NFPA 3000, the standard for Active Shooter/Hostile Response program. I talked to Montes about the complexities of the Lewiston response, what lessons were learned, and what safety agencies should be doing now to prepare for mass shooting incidents. LINKS Learn more about the American Red Cross Read up on the creation of NFPA 3000, and one city's journey to implementing it. Visit the document information page of NFPA 3000
Decades from now when we name at the seminal fires from the 21st Century, the Grenfell Tower fire in London, which killed 72 people in June 2017, will certainly be the list. Today on the podcast, we consider Grenfell's enduring lessons with Jose Torero, one of the world's most prominent fire protection engineers and a key figure in the United Kingdom's seven-year public inquiry into the tragedy. It's safe to say that no one has a better technical understanding than Torero of the underlying causes and impactful lessons of Grenfell— lessons that have already reshaped how people across the world think about regulation and building protection.
LINKS:
Read the final report from the United Kingdom's extensive inquiry into the causes of the Grenfell Tower Fire.
Read an in-depth NFPA Journal report exploring the UK's final Grenfell report.
Watch Jose Torero's keynote presentation from the 2025 NFPA Conference & Expo.
More than 80 percent of the world's population lives in low-and-middle income countries, according to the World Bank. In these nations, it's often a huge challenge to find the resources needed to build the systems of safety that people in higher-income countries take for granted. To put it in perspective, in the African nation of Uganda, there are just two fire trucks and 12 firefighters per million residents. In contrast, the U.S. has more than 1,000 firefighters and 200 fire trucks per million residents. Today on the podcast we talk to Samuel Nikoma, a fire safety advocate in Uganda who has an ambitious goal of slashing the fire deaths there in half. We discuss Eastern Africa's significant fire safety challenges, and how he is trying to build more awareness and grassroots efforts to start addressing them.
LINKS:
Read an NFPA Journal cover story from 2021 about the enormous population growth expected in Africa over the next decade, and the fire safety challenges—and opportunities—that these trends present.
Visit Samuel Nikoma's Linkedin page where he writes on the challenges of fire safety in Africa and his ideas for building the resources to address them.
Since 2022, New York has experienced more than 800 fires sparked by lithium-ion batteries, leading to 30 deaths and more than 400 injuries. The sudden explosion of battery incidents led FDNY in 2023 to form the Lithium-Ion Task Force, a specialized unit dedicated to addressing the growing threat of fires caused by batteries, particularly those used in e-bikes and e-scooters. Today on the podcast, we talk to John Orlando, the FDNY fire marshal who led the Lithium-Ion Task Force until recently. We chat about the causes and scope of New York City's battery problems, the work of the task force, and how other departments and jurisdictions can work together to achieve similar results, even without FDNY's considerable resources. LINKS:
As we've noted on the podcast a few times recently, standard development organizations and safety professionals are facing several significant challenges right now. In statehouses, lawmakers are increasingly passing bills that alter, delay, or even erase safety codes; fire marshals and other safety professionals say their voices are being increasingly marginalized; and court decisions involving copywrite protection threaten to disturb the century-old system under which safety standards are created and maintained. However, at last week's NFPA Conference & Expo, Jim Pauley, NFPA's president and CEO, unveiled an aggressive new public awareness campaign to try and reverse those trends. The day after the announcement, Pauley sat down with Jesse Roman to discuss the assault on safety and what NFPA and others are doing to combat these significant challenges.
The interview was recorded live on June 17 at the 2025 NFPA Conference & Expo in Las Vegas.
Links: Visit dontchancesafety.org to see the new awareness ad, read about the campaign, and learn how you can make a difference.
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