The NFPA Podcast

Myriad new tools have emerged in recent years that claim to help firefighters safely contain and extinguish electric vehicle fires. However, few of these tools have been independently tested, until now. This year...

Cooking is such a routine part of everyday life that it's easy to overlook its potential dangers. According to NFPA research, cooking is the leading cause of reported home fires, home fire injuries, and home fire deaths...

In even the most destructive wildfires, some structures survive untouched while everything around them is incinerated. It begs the question: What factors are most responsible for determining if a home is destroyed or...

The fire protection engineering profession is in a strange place right now. For one thing, there's a growing global shortage of FPEs just as demand for their services is surging. Factors such as accelerating technology...

Not long ago, a dirty, sooty turnout coat and helmet was a badge of honor in the fire service—tangible proof that a firefighter was in the action. But as concern grew about the high levels of cancer in the fire service...

Fire Prevention Week, which runs this year from October 5–11, is the longest running public safety observance in United States history. This year for the first time, the Fire Prevention Week theme will focus on...

On January 19, 2000, Shawn Simons and Alvaro Llanos, then 18-year-old freshman roommates at Seton Hall University, were severely burned when the residence hall they lived in caught fire. The blaze, one of the worst at a...

In October 2023, a 40-year-old man armed with semi-automatic rifle opened fire inside a bowling alley and later at a nearby restaurant in the small city of Lewiston, Maine. Between the two incidents, 18 people died and...

Decades from now when we name at the seminal fires from the 21st Century, the Grenfell Tower fire in London, which killed 72 people in June 2017, will certainly be the list. Today on the podcast, we consider Grenfell's...

More than 80 percent of the world's population lives in low-and-middle income countries, according to the World Bank. In these nations, it's often a huge challenge to find the resources needed to build the systems of...

Since 2022, New York has experienced more than 800 fires sparked by lithium-ion batteries, leading to 30 deaths and more than 400 injuries. The sudden explosion of battery incidents led FDNY in 2023 to form the...

As we've noted on the podcast a few times recently, standard development organizations and safety professionals are facing several significant challenges right now. In statehouses, lawmakers are increasingly passing...

As summer weather begins in the Northern Hemisphere, we revisit this very relevant episode from 2023. Heatwaves aren't just uncomfortable, they are deadly for millions of people around the globe each year. Recognizing...

Tribal nations and native communities across North America are consistently one of the highest-risk population groups for a range of health and safety issues, including fire incidents and casualties. And yet, developing...

May is Electrical Safety Month, which is a good time to remember that dozens of people across the world suffer injuries from electrical hazards every single day. Survivors of these incidents list a range of devastating...

Carbon monoxide is known as the silent killer, but it doesn't have to kill you to have permanent consequences. There is growing evidence that long-term exposure to CO, at concentrations that are too small for a typical...

As the weather in the Northern Hemisphere starts to shift to spring and construction season gears up, we revisist an episode from 2021 about the costly ongoing problem of fires in buildings under construction. In the...

This is the second part of our series looking at how fire and life safety codes are being delayed, erased, and watered down across the United States. On this episode, we talk to Ohio State Fire Marshal Kevin Reardon...

There is a serious threat to safety happening now that isn't getting nearly enough attention, according to many state fire marshals and fire service leaders. Across the U.S., anti-regulatory sentiments and well financed...

As the Los Angeles area wildfires exploded in early January, a nonprofit organization called MySafe:LA leapt into action, disseminating timely information to guide residents through the chaos. But public messaging is...

In 1973, fire killed and injured more people in the United States than in any other industrialized nation in the world. The next year, Congress passed the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act, a landmark bill that...

Modern warehouses and distribution centers are huge. Some have footprints larger than 60 American football fields and are filled with densely packed racks up to 100 feet tall. When a giant building like this catches...

In the last week, huge swaths of metro Los Angeles have been devastated by wildfires fueled by parched vegetation and hurricane force winds. The images and videos of once vibrant neighborhoods reduced to smoldering ash...

You could make the argument that artificial intelligence was the most consequential new technology for fire and life safety in 2024. Several fire departments began dabbling with AI this year, and some even hope to have...

This summer, long-awaited changes to the standard that sets the performance requirements for smoke alarms went into effect, marking a new era for the technology. For the first time, smoke alarms must now pass a test to...