Guidelines and equipment standards for the fire and emergency responders

STATEMENT OF

DR. ARDEN L. BEMENT, JR.

DIRECTOR

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY

BEFORE THE

SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION

“THE FIRE ACT: NEEDS OF THE FIRE SERVICE”

APRIL 30, 2003

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee. My name is Arden Bement. I am the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). I appreciate the opportunity to appear today. NIST supports the goals of S. 321 and understands the Department of Homeland Security is working with Committee staff concerning a number of comments.

NIST conducts research that advances the nation's measurement and standards infrastructure and works closely with national voluntary consensus standards organizations to support the development of consensus standards. These standards are needed by U.S. industry for continually improving products and services.

Equipment for first responders is very specialized. It also constitutes a small market that is generally served by small manufacturers. Producing new equipment for the market in the absence of generally-accepted standards is a high-risk venture. In addition, standards that reflect in use conditions for determining the performance of firefighter equipment would assist industry in providing equipment that meets or exceeds firefighter needs.

The U.S. fire service looks to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as its primary sources of equipment performance standards and safety information. NFPA has established committees that consider the need for equipment performance standards and develop consensus standards where views of industry, the fire service, government and commercial laboratories, and other interested parties are represented. Many of the staff in the NIST Building and Fire Research Laboratory and the Office of Law Enforcement Standards at NIST are members of NFPA and serve on their standards developing committees. NIST provides technical assistance to NIOSH in firefighter fatality investigations and thermal sensor evaluation. Technical reports from NIST on measurement techniques, methodologies, and results, provide NFPA committees and NIOSH with data and procedures to help advance national standards. NIST developed measurement methods are also adopted by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

In FY2001, FEMA established the Assistance to Firefighter’s Grant Program following passage of the Firefighter Investment and Response (FIRE) ACT that provides fire departments funding through grants for needed equipment. These funds are now allowing firefighters to be better equipped and prepared for fires and other emergencies. However, many new technologies are not yet supported by the existence of consensus standards. Individual fire departments are forced to assess the performance of these new technologies or rely solely on manufacturers information and demonstrations. Interoperability of equipment also suffers from lack of consensus standards.

To help address this issue, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between NIST and FEMA was signed in March 2002 and establishes a framework for NIST to serve as a standards and measurement science resource for the Department of Homeland Security’s FEMA in the areas of fire, disaster prevention, and homeland security. One of the purposes called out in the agreement is to aid the development of standards and methods to evaluate equipment for use by the Nation’s first responder and emergency management communities. Additionally, NIST will continue to work with other agencies and directorates of the Department of Homeland Security. In particular, the Under Secretary of Technology will soon formalize this cooperation with a memorandum of understanding between the Technology Administration and the Directorate of Science and Technology at the Department of Homeland Security.

In order to develop consensus standards for new fire fighting technologies as described in S. 321, there is a need for several interrelated activities.

First, priorities must be established for the development of the standards. In cooperation with the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), NIST has hosted workshops with representatives of the fire service, industry, and other laboratories to establish priorities for fire service research. Published results of these workshops have helped set the current research agenda for both NIST and USFA. Similar workshops should be held to establish priority and a timeline for the development of measurement techniques, testing methodologies, and consensus standards.

Second, measurement techniques and testing methodologies need to be developed for evaluating the performance of firefighter equipment using new technologies. NIST is the nation’s primary measurement laboratory. Our mission is to develop measurements and standards to enhance productivity, facilitate trade, and improve the quality of life. NIST has specialized laboratory facilities and staff expertise ideally suited for the development of these techniques and methodologies for many of the new fire fighting technologies.

Third, a network of private sector laboratories and facilities are needed where the measurement techniques and the methodologies can be used in a reproducible way, a necessary condition for the success of any standard. NIST will work with other organizations to assure that the measurement results are reproducible.

Finally, NIST will work closely with national voluntary consensus standards organizations to support the development of the consensus standards. An unbiased source of technical information and data, such as that supplied by NIST, is critical to the success of this effort.

Current NIST Research in Support of the Fire Service

NIST is proud of its role as a science and technology resource in helping to improve the effectiveness and safety of fire fighting. Below is a brief description of its current and recent activities.

Portable thermal imagers are used by firefighters to enhance vision. They are used to identify hot spots in cool surroundings such as hidden fires in void space or over-heated fluorescent light ballasts lights. They are also used to identify cool objects, like victims of fire incapacitated by smoke or downed firefighters in hot surroundings during building search and rescue. Unfortunately, the performance of the sensors implemented in various products has not been measured under controlled conditions. Furthermore, the minimum level of important performance attributes, such as image contrast, have not been determined.

NIST, with added funding from USFA, is developing an apparatus to measure how well thermal imaging hardware is able to aid vision and hazard sensing under a variety of realistic conditions. These laboratory measurements will be compared to measurements made in actual building fires and in large-scale fire experiments at NIST. The results will be used to assure that laboratory measurements are reliable indicators of real-world performance. Standards built on this foundation will provide for accurate measurement of the important performance attributes of firefighter equipment essential for quality, reliability, safe, and effective use.

Another example of our work deals with firefighter protective clothing. The NFPA Standard on Protective Ensemble for Structural Fire Fighting (NFPA1971) specifies the minimum design, performance, certification requirements, and test methods for structural firefighter protective ensembles. The test method for measurement of thermal protective performance for firefighter protective garment and the minimum rating required for safety is part of this NFPA standard. The Thermal Protective Performance (TPP) rating is determined by exposing dry materials to a single high intensity exposure condition that is often related to an extreme fire condition called flashover. This standard has contributed substantially to improved safety for firefighters, but firefighters tell us they are being burned through their gear under lower intensity exposures.

During fire fighting, a firefighter’s protective clothing is wet from the outside by water spray and the inside by perspiration produced from strenuous activity. NIST, assisted by funding from USFA, is performing measurements under a range of thermal exposures and moisture conditions and has found that wet gear performs differently than dry gear with respect to burn injury protection. Manufacturers have come to NIST to utilize the NIST apparatus to understand more about the behavior of their products under conditions different from those assumed in the present standard. This data generated by manufacturers working at NIST will be used to improve protective clothing products. In addition, the testing approach used at NIST will be offered for consideration for adoption as part of the current standard. The apparatus is also being used in exploratory NIST research to evaluate the thermal protective attributes of new materials such as carbon nano-tube composite fabrics. These measurements can help in the development of future protective clothing that has even better resistance to burn injury with reduced weight.

NIST works hard to anticipate needs so that information is ready when needed by industry to advance their products and provide for interoperability. Four years ago, NIST formed a consortium with several fire alarm hardware manufacturers. The fire alarm panel in buildings, often found in the lobby near the main entrance, is the heart of the building’s fire information system. Condition measurements and alarms from fire detectors placed throughout a building are sent to this display. Until recently even the best displays offered only rows of lights that indicated the zones in the building where fire was detected. Often a key or map was needed to interpret the lights. In many cases, it was easier to look for the fire than to use the information from the panel display.

The development of more powerful and affordable computer and graphic displays have provided manufacturers with the opportunity to expand the display capabilities and the amount of information available at the panel using graphic icons. NIST created a standard set of icons for these panels and other fire command devices. In this way, firefighters would only have to learn the meaning of one set of symbols if they were applied on all fire service graphic displays. Last fall, working from documents submitted by NIST, the NFPA Technical Committee on Testing and Maintenance of Fire Alarm Systems adopted a set of standard icons for fire alarm system displays and published these in the 2002 Edition of National Fire Alarm Code (NFPA 72). NIST is now turning its attention to the standards that will be needed to advance the wireless transmission and display of information contained in the building emergency systems to responding firefighters even before they arrive at a building.

Interagency research managed by NIST is also helping to protect firefighters responding to terrorism incidents. Threat analyses and simulations have been conducted to examine chemical warfare agent hazard concentrations in a variety of domestic terrorist attack scenarios, both for respiratory and percutaneous (skin) threats. Results are being supplied to the NFPA committee revising the Standard on Protective Ensembles for Chemical/Biological Terrorism Incidents (NFPA 1994).

Closing Remarks

I am delighted that there is recognition by the committee of the need for the development of firefighting equipment standards. NIST is the nation’s primary measurement laboratory and has always played a critical role in the development of effective consensus standards in support of industry and public needs. I expect NIST to continue to contribute substantially to improved safety and effectiveness of fire fighting in America.

Thank you and I would be happy to answer any of your questions.

Arden L. Bement, Jr., Director

Arden L. Bement, Jr., was sworn in as the 12th director of NIST on Dec. 7, 2001. Bement oversees an agency with an annual budget of about $812 million and an onsite research and administrative staff of about 3,000, complemented by a NIST-sponsored network of 2,000 locally managed manufacturing and business specialists serving smaller manufacturers across the United States. Prior to his appointment as NIST director, Bement served as the David A. Ross Distinguished Professor of Nuclear Engineering and head of the School of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University. He has held appointments at Purdue University in the schools of NuclearEngineering, Materials Engineering, and Electrical and ComputerEngineering, as well as a courtesy appointment in the KrannertSchool of Management. He was director of the MidwestSuperconductivity Consortium and the Consortium for the IntelligentManagement of the Electrical Power Grid.

Bement came to his position as NIST director well versed in the workings of the agency, having previously served as head of the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology, the agency's primary private-sector policy adviser; as head of the advisory committee for NIST's Advanced Technology Program; and on the Board of Overseers for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

Bement joined the Purdue faculty in 1992 after a 39-year career in industry, government, and academia. These positions included: vice president of technical resources and of science and technology for TRW Inc. (1980-1992); deputy under secretary of defense for research and engineering (1979-1980); director, Office of Materials Science, DARPA (1976-1979); professor of nuclear materials, MIT (1970-1976); manager, Fuels and Materials Department and the Metallurgy Research Department, Battelle Northwest Laboratories (1965-1970); and senior research associate, General Electric Co. (1954-1965).

Along with his NIST advisory roles, Bement served as a member of the U.S. National Science Board, the governing board for the National Science Foundation, from 1989 to 1995. He also chaired the Commission for Engineering and Technical Studies and the National Materials Advisory Board of the National Research Council; was a member of the Space Station Utilization Advisory Subcommittee and the Commercialization and Technology Advisory Committee for NASA; and consulted for the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and Idaho Nuclear Energy and Environmental Laboratory.

He has been a director of Keithley Instruments Inc. and the Lord Corp. and was a member of the Science and Technology Advisory Committee for the Howmet Corp. (a division of ALCOA).

Bement holds an engineer of metallurgy degree from the Colorado School of Mines, a master's degree in metallurgical engineering from the University of Idaho, a doctorate degree in metallurgical engineering from the University of Michigan, and a honorary doctorate degree in engineering from Cleveland State University. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.