NFPA Journal - July/August 2017 - 17

Dispatches Digital
ignoring referenced standards within
a code; lack of education around the
application of codes and standards;
reduced enforcement; and public
unawareness of the dangers of fire.
When governments and other entities do not adopt the latest versions of
codes and standards, or when designers
do not use them, they lose the benefit
of the latest technology, research, and
collective wisdom related to fire, electrical, and life safety.
When policy makers decide to
remove life safety and property protection provisions from codes, they
have substituted politics for technical
requirements that were determined
after extensive input from knowledgeable people across a spectrum of
professional disciplines.
When users fail to review and follow
standards that are referenced in the
codes, they are not ensuring the right
practices and products are used in the
right situations, increasing the vulnerability to disaster.
When the professionals involved in
design, installation, enforcement, and
maintenance have not kept up to date
on the latest requirements, they can
end up applying products improperly,
leading to catastrophic results.
When jurisdictions, under fiscal
pressures or lack of understanding of
the importance, reduce enforcement
efforts, they place their communities at
risk as buildings deteriorate, and when
they change ownership or type of use.
And when members of the public
take safety for granted and are uneducated about fire risks, their improper
or uneducated actions can place them
in peril.
The system the public relies on for
manging fire safety is broken, and a
single solution isn't the answer. It will
take a systems approach to fix it. At
NFPA, we are focused on looking at the
entire system and working with everyone involved to fill the gaps.
We may not be able to prevent
every tragedy from occurring, but by
recommitting to and promoting a full
system of fire prevention, protection,
and education, we can help save lives
and reduce loss. That is the story that
should consume the news of the day.

RESPONDER
RESOURCE

New app provides
first responders with
quick and easy access
to NFPA tools
By Angelo Verzoni

NFPA HAS DEVELOPED the "1st Responder Connection," a smartphone
app to help first responders across
the country better understand what
NFPA does and give them quick and
easy access to the resources and
information they want the most.
Ken Willette, NFPA's first responder segment director, said the idea
to develop an app came about last
year, after he and others from NFPA
kept hearing the same things from
departments they met with. The
departments weren't clear about
what NFPA does, and they thought
NFPA's resources were all prohibitively expensive. "So we asked them,
'If we gave you access to more NFPA
information, how would you want
it?'" Willette said. "And from the
volunteer to the metro departments,
everyone picked up their phones and
said, 'Give it to us on our phones.'"
Willette partnered with Nathaniel
Lin, NFPA's chief data scientist, to
bring the idea to NFPA President Jim

Pauley, who gave the project a green
light. Months of fine tuning concluded with its unveiling at June's Conference & Expo in Boston. The app,
which is now available for free on the
Apple and Google Play app stores,
gives first responders "information
they can use on the job every day,"
Pauley said during his remarks at the
C&E General Session.
Users of the app can access articles, tip sheets, videos, codes and
standards, and more on everything
from wildfires to emerging technologies like drones. Much of the content
is interactive. As of mid-June, the
app had more than 200 users, according to Willette.
Moving forward, Willette said NFPA
will gather user feedback to drive updates to the app, which could include
expanding or focusing content and
adding more interactive features.
For more information on the app,
visit nfpa.org/xchange and search
for "1st Responder."
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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http://www.nfpa.org/xchange http://nfpa.org/journal

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - July/August 2017