Proposed OSHA rules threaten rural volunteer fire departments #osha #firedepartments #cartoon

State of #NewHampshire Launches Statewide #FirefightingFoam Take Back Program

#AFFF Take Back Program will use new technology to destroy #PFAS chemicals

"This is a groundbreaking step in safeguarding public health and the #environment in the state.”

August 13, 2024

Concord, N.H. — "The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (#NHDES), in partnership with the New Hampshire State Fire Marshal, has launched a statewide initiative to destroy hazardous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in firefighting foam.

"During an event at the New Hampshire Fire Academy’s Aircraft Rescue Training Facility in Concord today, NHDES Commissioner Bob Scott announced details of the new Aqueous Film-Forming Foam (AFFF) Take Back Program. AFFF is primarily used by fire departments to smother flammable liquid fires, but its high concentrations of PFAS compounds resist typical environmental degradation processes and cause long-term contamination of water, soil and air. The ban on the use of these 'legacy foams' is possible because there are now PFAS-free foam alternatives available. The AFFF Take Back Program is set up to remove and properly dispose of AFFF from New Hampshire fire departments, local governments, and government-owned airports.

"NHDES has contracted with #ReviveEnvironmental Technology (Revive) to administer the collection and destruction of AFFF in the state. Following collection of the foam, Revive will consolidate the containers and ship them to its Columbus, Ohio, facility, where the foam will be treated with Revive’s #PFASAnnihilator® technology, originally developed by Battelle, which uses supercritical water oxidation (SCWO) to destroy the PFAS chemicals without generating harmful PFAS byproducts or transferring the PFAS elsewhere in the process. It is estimated that the Take Back Program will remove and properly treat and dispose of more than 10,000 gallons of AFFF collected from over 100 #FireDepartments.

"'The State of New Hampshire has made great strides in reducing environmental contamination and the public health risk to New Hampshire residents from traditional firefighting foam, and this Take Back Program is a major accomplishment in that mission,' said NHDES Commissioner Bob Scott. 'The ability to not only assist our fire departments and other facilities with the removal of their foam inventories, but to also find a disposal solution that fully destroys the PFAS is both a monumental and reassuring development.'

"The Concord event on Tuesday is one of 10 collection events being held across the state in the month of August. A full list of dates and locations can be found on the program’s webpage. The collection program is operated at no cost to local fire departments, but agencies must register their AFFF materials to be scheduled for collection on those dates. Funding for the program was appropriated by the New Hampshire Legislature to address PFAS contamination in our state.

https://www.des.nh.gov/news-and-media/state-new-hampshire-launches-statewide-firefighting-foam-take-back-program

Texas’ top emergency manager told a panel of lawmakers that the state should establish its own firefighting aircraft division after a series of wildfires scorched the Panhandle region earlier this year.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/public-safety/2024/04/03/482480/texas-emergency-director-calls-for-firefighting-air-force-after-historic-panhandle-fires/

#News #Politics #PublicSafety #Texas #FireDepartments #Fires #PanhandleFires #SmokehouseCreekFire

On Fire Departments - by Brad Hargreaves - Thesis Driven
#WalkableCities #FireDepartments
https://www.thesisdriven.com/p/on-fire-departments

Another view of a fire engine house from the early 1900s, closed in 1975. New photo by me.

📷: Konica T2
🎞: Arista Edu 200 (Foma 200)
🛁: Kodak D-76 & Ilford Rapid Fix

#analogphotography
#analoguephotography #filmphotography #believeinfilm #konica #konicat2 #aristaedu200 #kodakd76 #iso200 #bwphotography #firedepartments #enginehouse #fortwayne #frugalfilmproject

A fire engine house from the early 1900s, closed in 1975. New photo by me.

📷: Konica T2
🎞: Arista Edu 200 (Foma 200)
🛁: Kodak D-76 & Ilford Rapid Fix

#analogphotography
#analoguephotography #filmphotography #believeinfilm #konica #konicat2 #aristaedu200 #kodakd76 #iso200 #bwphotography #firedepartments #enginehouse #fortwayne #frugalfilmproject

@marcprecipice This is such an important issue. #firedepartments in the U.S. push towns/cities to have wide streets for their huge trucks. Wide streets encourage faster vehicle speed and endanger more lives. #SlowStreets #walkablecities #visionzero

Santa Fe Fire Department successfully battled a structure fire next to a gas station in #SantaFe on December 19 2022
#FireDepartments
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02QzjUDRgrxhZtvd5bx63gwQ997rRR3Bbk2NAMutoMzmM9D4tsJpPNStk29XSZSHcZl&id=100064302894863

Fire departments in #NewYork rely heavily on #federal funding. But that funding could soon be at risk. It's why Senator Chuck #Schumer is urging the #government to keep providing grants: https://bit.ly/3HR4VA0

#FireDepartments #firefighters

It’s that time of the year for Fire Departments to remind you not to fry a frozen #Turkey inside your house with too much oil right beside the baby’s crib and the dog bed. Y’all be safe out or in there. #Thanksgiving #FireDepartments #Turkey #TurkeyDay #Fire #Cooking

@pre My read is that rural fire protection really should be offered on a community basis. How that occurs ... might vary.

• There could be a rural volunteer fire department, with dedicated equipment and volunteer responders, some of whom would be on call at any time, others might respond to larger incidents. This is fairly common. It spares some of the expense of a professional force, but avoids the pitfalls of no coverage at all.

• There could be a state-wide pact for mutual aid. This seems to be how most western states within the US operate, where what's a small fire at 10 am might be a massive conflagration by noon, and where activities such as mowing and brush-clearing are limited because sparks from cutting blades can and have sparked massive, town-destroying wildfires. I'm personally aware of two major California blazes, one sparked by a man (illegaly) mowing acreage where the blade sparked against rock, another in which an automobile had a flat tire and the rim scraping along the road sparked a fire. Both were immense. Both were near Redding, in the northern Sacramento Valley. How costs are shared under such schemes I'm not sure. (Good question for further research.)

• The city fire department could contract specifically with the county for fire services at the county level. All county residents would pay based on services rendered, but at a specified rate. This is a classic risk-sharing / risk-spreading role. It isn't a direct fee-for-service model, but should avoid the deadweight losses associated with the present model.

What's obvious though is that the strongly-libertarian mode presently applied ... has tragic outcomes which could be easily overcome.

Given that, my suggestion would be not to move there. Short-sighted, spiteful people do short-sighted, spiteful things. And pay a high price for it.

@gedvondur #insurance #fireDepartments #libertarianism #risk #coercion #MarketFailures #tennessee #AntiGovernmentIdiocy

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@pre Fires, like pollution and disease, have a strong tendency to not respect borders.

Looking at the Twitter thread, and past the invective, there are a few elements that stand out:

• There's no community-supported general rural fire protection covering this property specifically.

• The local city fire department, tax-supported by the city, offers additional protection coverage outside its primary area of service, but only on a subscription basis.

• As noted with both this story and the Crassus history, there are some severe market failures associated with this sort of risk management practice. It's often been noted that large governments (e.g., the United States) are budgetarily an insurance provider (SSI, Medicare, FEMA) with a military appendage. That's pithy, but also suggests a possible underlying truth: that insurance services may be far better supplied by governmental than private institutions.

On that last point, my podcast listening has given me a few author-interviews covering the insurance industry, and how it came to be privately-provisioned. To say the least, it wasn't an obvious option, and isn't a good fit.

Questions include how the situation might be better settled.

@gedvondur

#insurance #fireDepartments #libertarianism #risk #coercion #MarketFailures #tennessee #AntiGovernmentIdiocy

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