May 8, 2008
"Mr. Watson - come here - I want to see you." Alexander Graham Bell was one of the greatest visionaries in history but when he said those first words into his mouthpiece I doubt he could have conceived of the communication technology that has evolved in the 130 or so years since. I am sure of one thing, however: he knew exactly what his telephone was, how it worked, how to use it properly and what it was capable of. The same cannot be said, I suggest, of many people today. As technology becomes more complex it simultaneously becomes more susceptible to snafus and more mysterious to those not directly involved in its development. In the last couple of years, technical problems at Research in Motion made headlines when they temporarily knocked out BlackBerry service, and BlackBerries only became available 11 years ago. Before that, nobody had even heard of the things.
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OAFC highlights and VOIP misstep |
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May 7, 2008
Once again the blog has been sadly neglected, due to attendance last week at the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs trade show and conference, followed by several days of catch up. Time, now, to catch up here, too.
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The tricky issue of negligence - part two |
April 23
I had the pleasure of hearing Ontario Fire Marshal Pat Burke speak passionately last week about fire safety in Ontario. His message was blunt and multi pronged:
- the fire service needs to be more pro active about public education;
- the window of opportunity to escape from a burning home – because of highly flammable contents and lightweight construction – is considerably shorter than it used to be;
- and people who don’t install smoke detectors, or who remove the batteries, then experience a fire in their homes that results in injury or death, should be severely punished.
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The tricky issue of negligence |
April 16, 2008
We posted a new poll on our website today (it’s about time, we know!), asking whether you think people who don’t have smoke detectors in their homes should be charged if a fire in the home leads to a death.
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April 2, 2008
First of all, some statistics recently released by the U.S. Fire Administration reflect very favourably on residential sprinklers.
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Spring brings trade show season |
April 1, 2008
The Fire Fighting in Canada blogsphere has been sorely ignored of late as we geared up on the magazine side of things for our spring issues of FFIC and Canadian Firefighter and EMS Quarterly.
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March 11, 2008
One of our priorities for the coming weeks is to beef up reporting about volunteer fire services. In great swaths of Canada, if it were not for volunteers, there would be no fire service at all. The risks taken by volunteers are sadly highlighted this week in Quebec, where the loss of two young volunteer firefighters has two communities reeling. The Globe and Mail carries a report here.
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More alarming smoke-detector news |
March 6, 2008
It’s bad enough that more than half of Canadians take the batteries out of their smoke detectors when shower steam or a bit of smoke from the oven causes them to go off (see blog entry below), but it’s truly disturbing that some fire officials are warning that the smoke detectors most of us have in our homes are second rate.
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