Previous Dinner Meetings 1999/2000

2000

• May 2000

  Gary Keith, NFPA, NFPA Building Code
  Recently the National Fire Protection Association announced its intention to develop the NFPA Building Code. Gary Keith discussed the background for this decision and the development and implementation plan.

• April 2000

  Mike Swain Fire Prevention Officer University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA
  
  In September of last year the College Fire Safety Forum, a cooperative effort of the National Fire Protection Association and the United States Fire Administration, produced a report reviewing the fire safety at colleges and universities. Mike was an active participant in this effort and presented a summary of the findings. View Presentation

• March 2000

  Ed Comeau, Owner of writer-tech.com, a technical writing firm will discuss interFIRE VR.

interFIRE VR is the newest, cutting-edge, training application for fire investigators. Using state-of-the-art virtual reality, the fire investigator can navigate through a real fire scene, inspect the burned rooms, pick up objects and send them to the lab for analysis, interview witnesses, bring in a canine team-in other words, everything short of actually digging through the debris! Along with this scenario is a full tutorial and reference section. interFIRE VR is one of the most innovative packages available to the fire protection community.

interFIRE VR has been three years in the making, and is the result of a partnership between NFPA, ATF, USFA and American Re-Insurance. Ed Comeau, the former chief fire investigator for NFPA, has been involved in this project since its inception and will provide a demonstration of this exciting training tool.

Ed Comeau is the owner of writer-tech.com, a technical writing firm.

February 2000
• Douglas J. Carpenter, MScFPE Vice President and Principal Engineer Combustion Science & Engineering , Inc. Columbia, Maryland

  Antarctica - During an internship Mr. Carpenter was stationed at the McMurdo Station which provides year-round exposure to extensive research activities for the United States. Mr. Carpenter will give an inside look into this very different environment taken straight from personal experience and will also discuss his research into water transport time in dry sprinkler systems.

1999

• October - 1999
• Speaker Dean K. Wilson, P.E. Hughes Associates, Inc. Windsor, CT. Presented an overview of the changes to the National Fire Alarm Code, NFPA 72 The 1999 edition of the National Fire Alarm Code (NFPA 72) has changes that may affect how future systems are designed, installed and maintained. Mr. Wilson was active in the development of the 1999 Edition. View Presentation
  
• November - 1999
  • Richard Dolby, the Augusta Building Official, and Richard Burt, Architect, discussed their viewpoints on the Maine State House in Agusta. Kurt Ruchala of Firepro presented the results of the modeling study. The Maine State House is under-going renovations in multiple phases. A part of the renovation involves an ornamental stairway that also serves as an egress stairway. There was some concern on the part of the local building officials regarding the need to enclose this stairway to achieve an acceptable level of safety. Smoke and egress modeling was used to determine the best solution to the problem.
• December - 1999
  • Changes to The Standard for Installation of Sprinkler Systems NFPA 13. The 1999 Edition of The Standard for Installation for Sprinkler Systems NFPA 13 has changes that may affect how future systems are designed, installed, and maintained. Mr. Puchovsky, the NFPA Staff Liaison, was active in the development of the 1999 Edition, and presented an overview of these changes. View Presentation