Firefighter Sims

With lots of kids home for an extended period of time, parents have been looking for worksheets and online activities to do. Don't forget that fire safety is something many kids learn at school and with schools closed now is a great time to download fire safety activity sheets or watch some learning videos online. What about a fire drill? Many adults are not even sure how they would get out of the house if there was a fire blocking the stairs or their bedroom door. Ask your kids to setup the escape routes and meeting points for your house. You will be surprised at some of the great ideas the kids will have plus it will allow you to assess whether or not the kids and yourself actually have a plan you can execute in case of a fire in the house. Here are some great resources you can use for free.

CloseYourDoor.org is a site setup by the UL Fire Safety Research Institute discussing the importance of closing your bedroom door at night. Due to the abundance of synthetic materials in our houses, fires spread much more quickly then they did in the past. They recommend closing the door as a way to reduce the spread of a fire and reduce the toxic fumes. The site has some videos and a coloring activity page you can print for the kids.

NFSC, Inc.'s "Free Downloads & Online Resource Center" offers FREE special materials available online only. Many of these resources have been designed as companions to specific sets of materials and can be used to reward children for learning important fire safety lessons. They are available as downloadable PDF files free of charge and may be printed or duplicated in reasonable quantities by fire departments, teachers, or parents for educational purposes. On the site there are a couple of coloring pages as well as printable certificates. Why not give the kids a little reward after your fire drill and give them a printed certificate.

US Fire Administration has some great Sesame Street Fire Safety downloads. You may not know that more than half of child fire deaths are among children age 4 or younger – making them an important audience for fire prevention and education. The Sesame Street Fire Safety Program curriculum for preschoolers is available in both English and Spanish.

A specially-adapted 'tactile helmet', developed by researchers at the University of Sheffield, could provide fire-fighters operating in challenging conditions with vital clues about their surroundings.
The helmet is fitted with a number of ultrasound sensors that are used to detect the distances between the helmet and nearby walls or other obstacles. These signals are transmitted to vibration pads that are attached to the inside of the helmet, touching the wearer's forehead. Rescue workers, such as fire-fighters, who might be working in dark conditions or in buildings filled with smoke, will be able to use the signals to find walls and other obstacles that could help guide them through unfamiliar environments.

It is anticipated that a lightweight version of the technology could also be useful to people with visual impairments, acting as an additional 'sense' to guide users or to help them avoid hazards.
Invented by a team of researchers at the Sheffield Centre for Robotics (SCentRo), the helmet was inspired by research into tactile sensing in rodents, whose whiskers give early warning of potential hazards.

Professor Tony Prescott of the University of Sheffield and director of SCentRo, said: "When a firefighter is responding to an emergency situation he will be using his eyes and ears to make sense of his environment, trying to make out objects in a smoke filled room, for example, or straining to hear sounds from people who might need rescuing. We found that in these circumstances it was difficult to process additional information through these senses. Using the sense of touch, however, we were able to deliver additional information effectively."

The team also found that the helmet was the ideal place to locate the vibrating pads because, although the fingertips might seem a more obvious choice, stimuli delivered to the wearer's forehead enabled them to respond more rapidly to the signals, and would also leave their hands free for other tasks.
The prototype helmet was developed using a Rosenbauer helmet donated by Northfire Ltd and was produced following a two-year research project, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service have also assisted, providing advice during the development period as well as access to their training facility. The next step is to find a commercial partner interested in further developing the helmet.

The helmet will be on show at this year's Gadget Show Live, to be held at the NEC in Birmingham from 3-7 April 2013. For more information go to: http://www.gadgetshowlive.net/.

I headed out again this year to Las Vegas for Fire-Rescue Med. I attended last year and found it well worth the trip. I really wanted to go again this year so I made sure I put in my training request early. I recommend EMS Personnel and Narcotics Tampering: Awareness and Prevention, interesting stuff. I saw Randolph Mantooth at the conference last year and am looking forward to seeing him again. This was an old post and the original video was out of date. I have updated with a nice video of Mantooth discussing becoming a real paramedic.

In my continuous search for fire simulators, today I came across a German PC game. The game is called Feuerwehr Simulator 2010. Below is the trailer and I went to the website and used Google to translate it. Here are the details of the game:

What Fire fans have been waiting for. The fire simulator 2010 provides for the first time a realistic fire simulation from a first person perspective of the fireman. The development studio VSTEP also stands out for professional fire simulations for firefighters.

Take on the role of one or more men of a fire station. In various scenarios, you have to fight fires or rescue people. Here you have the extensive use your equipment vehicles: tubes / pipes, axes, aerial ladder, breathing apparatus etc.

The following missions are in the simulation:

•Small fire in a locked house
•Burning gas station
•Traffic accident in tunnel
•Train accident
•Save children from a burning building
•Fire on a ship in port
•Truck accident involving hazardous materials, etc.

Of course, you can view the entire scene in the 3rd-person view. The Simulator 2010 brings for the first time the daily lives of professional firefighters in a simulation on the PC.