ISO 13571:2007 describes the calculation of safe escape time using yields of asphyxiant and irritant gases for performance based design. Hydrogen chloride (HCl) gas is an incapacitating irritant, reported to be intolerable at concentrations above 100 ppm, but lethal to rats only at concentrations around 5000ppm for a 30 minute exposure. It is evolved from burning PVC, and other chlorine contain...

This paper presents a summary of the forest fire reports in the insular Caribbean derived from both management reports and an analysis of publicly available Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrodiometer (MODIS) satellite active fire products from the region. A vast difference between the amount of fires reported by land managers and fire points in the MODIS Fire Information for Resource Managemen...

Introduction For the pathologist providing a routine necropsy service to the local coroner, examination of bodies associated with fires can generate difficult interpretational problems. Appropriate historical and circumstantial evidence may be vital to overall conclusions,' although, as with bodies recovered from water,2 such collateral information should always be available before any coroner'...

Automated early fire detection systems have recently received a significant amount of attention due to their importance in protecting the global environment. Some emergent technologies such as ground-based, satellite-based remote sensing and distributed sensor networks systems have been used to detect forest fires in the early stages. In this study, a radio-acoustic sounding system with fine sp...

reports that have appeared in Science (3, 4), these results merit further investigation. Bemer and Landis indicate that during the Late Cretaceous [75 to 95 million years ago (Ma)] the 02 content of the atmosphere was "greater than 30 percent," whereas in the Eocene-Oligocene values were 21%, as today. Lovelock (2) asserts that "at 25% oxygen even damp twigs and grass of a rainforest would igni...

Based on complex network theory, we propose a computational methodology which addresses the spatial distribution of fuel breaks for the inhibition of the spread of wildland fires on heterogeneous landscapes. This is a two-level approach where the dynamics of fire spread are modeled as a random Markov field process on a directed network whose edge weights are determined by a Cellular Automata mo...

Disruptions to historic disturbance and herbivory regimes have altered plant assemblages in forests worldwide. An emerging consensus suggests that these disruptions often result in impoverished forest biotas. This is particularly true for eastern U.S. deciduous forests where large gaps and understory fires were once relatively common and browsers were far less abundant. Although much research h...

Wildland fires are expected to become more frequent and severe in many ecosystems, potentially posing a threat to many sensitive species. We evaluated the effects of a large, stand-replacement wildfire on three species of pond-breeding amphibians by estimating changes in occupancy of breeding sites during the three years before and after the fire burned 42 of 83 previously surveyed wetlands. An...

Residential fires are the second leading cause of unintentional injury death among children ages 1–14 in the UK. Case-control data show that smoke alarms are associated with a substantial reduction in the risk of death in the event of a house fire, the protective eVect being greatest in fires involving children under 5. In the UK, the Home OYce recommends that all homes are fitted with smoke al...

Results of recent researches of large pool fires are reviewed. Researches on combustion characteristics of large petroleum fires have been conducted by many research groups. To do large fire experiments costs very much and huge open space is taken, but it is important to conduct large scale experiments for obtaining information of large real tank fires. Therefore, in order to promote large pool...