There was no apparatus on display this year from the northern Illinois area. The image shows the Lucas Oil Stadium exhibits. With Pierce finally moving their booth to the convention hall with all of the other apparatus, the stadium had a much different look and feel than it has since it opened in 2008.
Ford is recalling nearly 43,000 small SUVs because gasoline can leak from the fuel injectors onto hot engine surfaces, increasing the risk of fires. But the recall remedy does not include repairing the fuel leaks.
The recall covers certain Bronco Sport SUVs from the 2022 and 2023 model years, as well as Escape SUVs from 2022. All have 1.5-liter engines.
Ford says in documents filed with U.S. safety regulators that fuel injectors can crack, and gasoline or vapor can accumulate near ignition sources, possibly touching off fires.
Dealers will install a tube to let gasoline flow away from hot surfaces to the ground below the vehicle. They’ll also update engine control software to detect a pressure drop in the fuel injection system. If that happens, the software will disable the high pressure fuel pump, reduce engine power and cut temperatures in the engine compartment, according to documents posted Wednesday on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website.
Owners were to be notified by letter starting April 1.
The company says in documents it has reports of five under-hood fires and 14 warranty replacements of fuel injectors, but no reports of crashes or injuries.
In an email, Ford said it is not replacing fuel injectors because it is confident the recall repairs “will prevent the failure from occurring and protect the customer.” The new software also will trigger a dashboard warning light and allow customers to drive to a safe location, stop the vehicle and arrange for service, the company said. NHTSA documents filed by Ford say the problem happens only in about 1% of the SUVs.
The company also said it will extend warranty coverage for cracked fuel injectors, so owners who experience the problem will get replacements. Ford said repairs are already available, and details of the extended warranty will be available in June.
Ford said the recall is an extension of a 2022 recall for the same problem. The repair has already been tested on vehicles involved in the previous recall, and Ford said it’s not aware of any problems.
The company also said it isn’t recommending that the SUVs be parked only outdoors because there’s no evidence that fires happen when vehicles are parked and the engines are off.
In the past, NHTSA has said it does not have legal authority to pre-approve recall fixes. But in a statement Wednesday, the agency said it will “closely track their performance using field data.” The agency said owners who have questions should contact their dealership or Ford.
More than 40,000 people were killed last year in traffic crashes, according to preliminary data released Monday, remaining above pre-pandemic levels but slightly down from their peak in 2021.
The new data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration adds to concerns that little is being done to address one of the most common causes of preventable deaths. Traffic deaths spiked in 2020 and again in 2021 and have since declined slightly. Still, they are up 25% since 2013, and the Governors Highway Safety Association found that pedestrian deaths reached a 40-year high in the United States in 2022.
The NHTSA said that “distracted driving,” an issue that has grown in urgency with the ubiquity of smartphones, resulted in 3,308 deaths and 289,310 injuries in 2022, and 3,522 deaths in 2021.
The agency released the data to coincide with the launch of an April campaign to spread awareness about distracted driving called “Put the Phone Away or Pay,” which hopes to scare people away from texting and driving, but which some advocates call an ineffective waste of resources.
The campaign consists of new nationwide advertisements warning what can happen if people drive distracted, coupled with heightened law enforcement for distracted driving. The NHTSA plans to spend $5 million in national media advertisements for the campaign.
Some road safety advocates aren’t convinced that these campaigns do anything to make roads significantly safer, thinking instead they are more of a way for the NHTSA to shirk its own regulatory responsibilities while appeasing motorists.
A spokesperson for AAA said that while the group supports driver awareness campaigns, their efficacy is tough to measure.
A senior research associate at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Highway Safety Research Center thinks these awareness campaigns have virtually no effect.
The government is warning people to immediately stop using a fire-extinguishing device shaped like a ball.
Elide Fire-Extinguishing Ball (Photo provided by CPSC)
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says Elide fire-extinguishing balls can fail to extinguish a fire, leaving people at risk of injury and death.
However, the CPSC says Elide Fire USA has not agreed to recall the balls or help customers with a fix for the products.
According to ElideFireUS.com, the ball activates by itself within seconds of flames touching it. The ball breaks open and dispenses a dry chemical to extinguish a fire.
The CPSC says the products can fail to effectively disperse the chemicals and fail to put out fires. It says the balls do not have a pressure gauge or pressure indicator, a locking device to reduce unintentional discharge, or a nozzle to direct the discharge.
The CPSC says the Elide Fire Ball does not meet the requirements of UL 299 Dry Chemical Fire Extinguishers and UL 711 Rating and Fire Testing of Fire Extinguishers, which are voluntary safety standards.
The company says its product is not a fire extinguisher, so measuring it against the fire extinguisher standards is not a fair measure because its product will ultimately fail in that testing scenario.
The Fire Ball was created to bring an additional line of fire protection to any potential fire situation. When it is mounted in a higher-risk area, he says it can stop a small fire from becoming a large fire.
According to the government, Elide Fire USA sells three models of fire-extinguishing balls. Models ELB01 and ELB02-1 are red. Model ELB02-02 is blue. The products sold for between $95 and $120. The CPSC says its warning is for all three models.
A CPSC news release urges consumers not to buy or sell the fire-extinguishing balls. If you already have the fire-extinguishing balls, the CPSC says to take them to a local fire department or a hazardous waste disposal facility.
The government says people should only buy fire extinguishers that meet the UL 299 and UL 711 safety standards and are marked with those certifications.
Save the Date Benefit to help Tim Olk The Man behind the Camera to help him fight cancer. More information to come as the event comes together to support the man that has been there for so many others
Moore (OK) firefighters train to battle not only dangerous fires, but hoarding conditions as well at a brand new training area that now gives them first-hand experience when evacuating hoarder homes, thanks to a local nonprofit.
Goodwill Central Oklahoma donated nearly $3,000 worth of salvaged goods to the Moore Fire Department.
The fire chief said his crews don’t go into hoarder homes often, but when they do, it brings additional challenges. It’s a potential life or death situation, in each case the struggle is to get through piles and piles of debris.
The new facility is filled with items that can no longer be sold in Goodwill stores, but can serve still another purpose.
Ohio has launched the first program in the country to collect and destroy PFAS-laden firefighting foam.
The takeback program is a statewide effort for fire departments to dispose of their stores of Aqueous film forming foam, otherwise known as AFFF – one of the most pervasive sources of “forever chemicals.”
Until now, Ohio fire departments have had no way of getting rid of their stores of foam, which can risk residents’ health if the foam contaminates soil and drinking water. State officials estimate there are tens of thousands of gallons of the foam in Ohio, which has been piling up while waiting on a solution.
AFFF is a firefighting tool that’s been used since the 1960s. It also happens to contain PFAS, which are man-made chemicals coming under increased regulatory scrutiny for its links to certain cancers, increased infertility, and other health risks. In 2022, Ohio banned its use in firefighting training. However, there wasn’t a way to get rid of it.
But through the takeback program, the state of Ohio will partner with the environmental services company Revive Environmental to collect and destroy the firefighting foam.
Columbus-based research institute Battelle developed the PFAS Annihilator technology that will be used to destroy the foam and then formed spinout company Revive Environmental to commercialize it.
It works by putting the chemicals under intense heat and pressure which break the molecular bonds that make PFAS so durable.
Each annihilator can take roughly 250 gallons of foam a day.
Other states may sign on to take part. For example, New Hampshire will be the next state to collect and destroy their AFFF stores using the PFAS Annihilator, according to Revive Environmental.
This program is specific to fire departments, though other entities such as airports or other emergency departments may also have their own stores of the foam.
The PFAS Annihilator may also be used to destroy PFAS in water leaching from landfills and contaminated groundwater.
I have an interesting fire department related news story from Detroit. It is quite interesting and has some similarities to what is happening in Chicago. At the moment, Chicago is running short of operable spare tower ladders. This story is also about not having an operable tower ladder for the center of the city. Tower Ladder 7, the one closest to downtown Detroit, hasn’t been running without a tower ladder since October.
Last week, AT&T suffered a nationwide outage that the company believes was caused by “the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack,” according to the company’s website.
AT&T acknowledged the outage on its site at 10:15 a.m. on Thursday and reported that all service was restored just after 2 p.m. Despite many AT&T customers on post being unable to use their wireless devices, emergency personnel –who rely on AT&T’s FirstNet for some communications – were fully operational.
Nationwide, there were reports from some civilian police and fire departments of FirstNet being down.
“This outage has had no impact on the First Responder Broadband Network (FirstNet) on Redstone Arsenal,” Deputy Fire Chief Robert Simmons said. “Our FirstNet devices have continued to function normally. I have talked with network engineers at AT&T, and they tell me this is true of the network across the nation.”
Simmons also said this incident showed an “excellent proof of concept” referring to the work the installation has done to install a dedicated communications network for first responders on post, which is part of an Armywide partnership with the FirstNet Government Authority and AT&T.
“It shows how well Band 14, the band dedicated to FirstNet, functions even when there is an outage on the commercial side,” Simmons said. “This event shows why this capability is a critical component in our ability to connect first responders.”
Redstone Arsenal was the first installation with an approved infrastructure application consisting of three macro towers, 28 small cells and miles of fiber. The system gives emergency personnel’s communications across the network priority over other traffic.
According to the company’s website, “FirstNet is different from other carriers in that it has a dedicated public safety core that routes FirstNet traffic. “It also encrypts network traffic within the core, creating the highly secure environment public safety requires.”
