Latest Fire Stories

[ Watch the Video ] Research on the International Space Station also aims for a better understanding of fuel combustion here on Earth Improving fire-fighting techniques in space and getting a better understanding of fuel combustion here on Earth are the focus of a series of experiments on the International Space Station, led by a professor at the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. to A first round of experiments ran from March 2009 to December 2011....

Clearing vegetation close to houses is the best way to reduce impacts of severe bushfires, according to a team of scientists from Australia and the USA who examined house loss after as a result of Black Saturday, when a series of fires raged across the Australian state of Victoria, killing 173 and injuring 414. The research involving 12,000 measurements at 500 houses affected by the Black Saturday fires was only made possible by the sheer size of the devastation of February 7, 2009....

Wood-burning stoves are a popular source of heating in many countries. However in recent years there has been much debate about the potential negative health effects associated with wood smoke. A Norwegian researcher has studied the influence of combustion conditions on the emissions and their health effects. Wood-burning is controversial in many countries, including the USA and Canada. Some groups wish to ban wood-burning whereas others are trying to convince opponents that clean-burning...

Shifting a fraction of truck-borne freight onto trains would have an outsized impact on air quality in the Midwest, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Much of that impact boils down to simple efficiency, according to Erica Bickford, a graduate student in UW–Madison's Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. For each ton they carry, long-distance trucks go about 150 miles on a gallon of diesel fuel. Trains can move a ton more than 400 miles per gallon....

[ Watch the Video ] Whether free-burning or smoldering, uncontrolled fire can threaten life and destroy property. On Earth, a little water, maybe some chemicals, and the fire is smothered. In space, where there is no up or down, flames behave in unconventional ways. And when your entire world is the size of a five-bedroom home like the International Space Station, putting out even a small fire quickly is a life-and-death matter. Since March 2009, NASA's Flame Extinguishment...

[ Watch the Video ] NASA's latest Earth-observing satellite, the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Oct. 28 to extend key environmental data records established by an earlier generation of NASA satellites. To mark the launch, we are looking back at one of the scientific legacies NPP will build upon: the global fire data record. An instrument on NPP called the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) will extend this...

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Drager announces that it will hold a free webinar titled, "Understanding Flashovers" to educate firefighters on the dangers associated with the flashover phenomenon. The webinar will be held on November 10, 2011 at 8 p.m. EST and will be hosted by 28-year veteran of fire services and captain of the Los Angeles Fire Department, Craig Nielsen. "Education on fire safety is our priority," says Greg Sesny, product manager for Drager North America. "We...

An Irish coroner has ruled that a 76-year-old man who burned to death last December was a victim of spontaneous combustion, according to BBC News reports on Friday. Dr. Ciaran McLoughlin, the coroner of West Galway, said that the death of Michael Faherty was the first case of spontaneous combustion he had ever seen. Faherty died at his home in Clareview Park, Ballybane, on December 22, 2010, and according to the British news agency, "investigators had been baffled as to the cause of Mr....

  Mankind's relationship with fire, and the ways people have historically used and managed these flames, are among the topics covered by a team of international researchers in a new study, published in Wednesday's edition of the Journal of Biogeography. According to the National Science Foundation (NSF), "Fires have continuously occurred on Earth for at least the last 400 million years. But since the 1970s, the frequency of wildfires has increased at least four-fold, and the total size...

RACINE, Wis., Aug. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's press conference yesterday regarding her recommendation to ban all gel fuels in the wake of accidents that resulted in serious burn injuries, Real Flame, a Racine, Wis.-based company that has sold gel-fueled products for more than two decades, wants to clearly communicate that its gel fuel has not been responsible for a single burn incident. Real Flame also urges consumers to be aware that...