Hello. I'm Jim Milke, Professor and Chair of the Department of Fire Protection Engineering and it's my pleasure to kick off the class in The Effect of Fires on People, Property and the Environment. As part of this course we're gonna provide an overview of fire safety, of Fire Protection Engineering. For the overall course we want to take a look at development of fires in buildings, examine or talk about the array of fire protection systems that are available and are used to mitigate damage from fire, described the scope of fire protection engineering. Talked about how people are affected by fire and how people respond to fire. Talk about how structures are affected, how property and contents are affected. In some cases because of thermal damage and other cases because of interaction with smoke and corrosive products and combustion. And then, finally, we'll want to talk a little bit about how one develops a solution, a fire safety solution to a building and what sort of thought process a practicing engineer would go through to deliver a particular level of fire safety. I'm gonna be doing much of the presentation for this course, but I'm also gonna be assisted in 3 of the 6 presentations that we're gonna make. One in talking about the discipline of fire protection engineering, and that will be offered by Chris Jelenewicz, who is the engineering program manager of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. The discussion on the effect of fire on people will be given by Doctor Erica Kuligowski who is a fire protection engineer and sociologist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. And then finally the discussion on implementing fire safety designs and the solutions will be developed by Eric Rosenbaum, who is a vice president of Hughes Associates. As part of this course we'll anticipate that you'll do get involved in the class a bit. There will be short discussion papers that will be associated with each of the weekly modules. These discussion topics will be included in each of the presentations, typically near the end of the presentation. And the idea of each of these presentations is to allow you to participate in this course, to apply the material in the module and really be able to appreciate what's involved. As a part of that particular topic, perhaps conduct a little research so the intent is that you go a little bit beyond what is presented in the discussions. And do a little bit of research to further explore a particular topic. As part of any of these discussion papers, we ask that you provide at least one outside reference. In each of your discussion papers, and there should be a citation of that respective reference. So just very briefly, as much as you're gonna hear from Chris Jelenewicz in much more detail about what is fire protection engineering. But I felt it was appropriate to have, at least, a little discussion here in this beginning presentation is the what is this field of fire protection engineering? And the definition from the Society of Fire Protection Engineers is that fire protection engineers use science and technology to make our world safer from fire. Well what's that mean? What's making the world safe from fire mean? And it means we're gonna provide protection to people that would be exposed to the fire. We'd be providing protection to property and contents, to the environment, and perhaps to the economy. You see in the couple of photos here of the MGM Grand, first of all and the fire in Las Vegas in November of 1980 where 84 people died, very much a life safety issue was involved in that incident with the deaths, the many injuries. The hotel was out of business from November until the following July, until the renovations could be made and following the fire. Another incident just very recently in the Philadelphia area, the Dietz and Watson Warehouse. So, again, a huge amount of property and contents damage. But the other major piece of that was damage to the local economy because now you've got a facility that's obviously gonna be out of business for quite a while until the structures rebuilt. Now all those workers that were part of that facility are now out of work basically, so that provides an impact to the local economy when such a devastating fire occurs. Fires occurred frequently, they are rare events in general. For anyone of us it's rare that we experience a fire in our own personal lives. But they occur. And as you think about the media reports that you find that fires are in the media pretty much all the time. They occur in all areas of our world in certainly much of our focus is gonna be on building fires, so this is a fire in Los Angeles in the 1990s. There are fires in our homes or in homes. This is the Dietz and Watson fire again from a little different perspective, or earlier in the day. As that was going, they're occurring in cruise ships, in assortment of transportation vehicles. And our space capsules are not immune from that. With the Apollo fire that killed astronauts in that incident and then there are wildland fires that occur as well. We'll mention just again in the beginning sort of a review. So this course is being provided from the Fire Protection Engineering Department at the University of Maryland and the one item that I'll mention about our program at Maryland is that we're unique. We are the only professionally accredited Fire Protection Engineering undergraduate program in the United States. So that makes us very special, very unique sort of institution. Of further at Maryland we are 1 0f 3 Fire Protection Engineering graduate degrees in the United States. So that the combination of the undergrad and the graduate program at any American university is only here. Again you'll here more about the discipline of fire protection engineering. But a question that often comes up for a student that gets in in our degree program here, where might they go for employers? And you can see logos of several of the employers. And the first way I should answer, where do fire protection engineering graduates go for employment? The comment I'd make is that they basically go to the same type of entities as any other engineer. So fire protection engineers are not particularly special in that regard. For us, some of the logos of recent employers are indicated here. So we have the consulting engineering companies on the far right-hand side of this slide. And these are logos of consulting engineering companies that are principally fire protection engineering consultanting companies. So you can see the Koffel Associates and Hughes and RJA. Aon has a consulting group. Code consultants and pool fire protection, are all fire protection engineering consulting companies so perhaps are relatively small names for people, for those of you who are from outside the fire protection engineering field. But are very, very much signficant entities in fire protective engineering here in the US. Fortune 500 companies employee fire protective engineers and you can recognize logos from several of the entities. Many of these people, the Marriott and Disney World, Exon Mobile, Intel, all the fire protection engineers there are involved with protecting, or being concerned with protecting the facilities of that corporation. Siemens and Simplex Grinnell are manufacturers of fire protection products, so the engineers that are there look at products, and then those at UL are looking at those products but from a certification or a listing process. And then finally the government agencies hire fire protection engineers just like they hire any other engineering discipline. So you see some logos here of fire protection engineers working with government agencies where they're involved in research. Perhaps in setting regulation. Or again perhaps in overseeing the fire safety, the facilities of that agency. The one exception to that profile would be those at ATF, that is a fire investigation group that gets involved travelling nationally to a fire investigation where there's the possibility of a federal crime that's being committed. Or perhaps where local fire investigators need some help with the investigation that they're confronted with. So with that very brief introduction, again, we'll hear much more of that in another segment from Chris Jelenewicz, but wanted to provide a little perspective for you, as we start our walk through this introductory course and talking about Fire Protection Engineers and what is the discipline. We've said that Fire Protection Engineers use science and technology to make our world safe from fire. And then finally or second I want to emphasize one of the key characteristics and why this is being offered from Maryland. It is that the University of Maryland Fire Protection Engineering program is truly one-of-a-kind, having the only ABED accredited undergraduate program in the country, and also having a graduate degree program here as well. So with that, we'll bring this to a close and come back with another segment very briefly that we'll talk about fire behavior.
