NFPA Journal - Fall 2021 - 14

Dispatches Ecosystem
Government responsibility is a critical component of a safety ecosystem,
as demonstrated by the catastrophic ammonium nitrate blast that rocked Beirut,
Lebanon, last August. Officials were aware of the potential hazard but failed to act.
BUILDING SAFETY
STEP AHEAD
By Angelo Verzoni
H
ow would your community fare if you examined
it through the lens of the NFPA Fire &
Life Safety Ecosystem™
Developers of the ecosystem assessment tool hope it will
drive changes to improve fire, life, and electrical safety
worldwide. " It was designed to be applicable to a small
town, a big city, and everything in between, " said Meghan
Housewright, director of the NFPA Fire & Life Safety Policy
Institute, which helped design the tool. " It asks users a
series of yes or no questions about each of the eight ecosystem
components and provides a color-coded score, from
red being the most in-trouble area to green indicating that
everything is functioning really well. It tells you where the
strengths and weaknesses are within the community. "
Housewright said she hopes the tool will allow communities
to correct safety gaps before they lead to disaster,
and cited the Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 72 people
in London in 2017, as an example. " There has been a lot of
14 | NFPA JOURNAL * FALL 2021
? Now you can find out
with the help of a new online tool released by
NFPA.
In December, Cody and Shelby Allen, a married
firefighter couple in Colorado, died of carbon
monoxide poisoning in their home.
A NEW ECOSYSTEM ASSESSMENT TOOL
AIMS TO CORRECT SAFETY GAPS IN
COMMUNITIES BEFORE THEY LEAD TO
DISASTER
examination into what went wrong with that fire, and they
have identified different shortcomings that contributed to
it, from problems with a skilled workforce to code use to the
inspection and compliance process, " she said. " With a tool
like this, you would be able to address some of those weaknesses
sooner rather than in a post-event inquiry setting. "
While the first iteration of the tool-available in English,
Spanish, and Arabic-was designed to apply broadly to
any community, Housewright said future adaptations may
address specific regional hazards, like combustible exterior
walls in Europe and the Middle East or petrochemical facilities
on the Gulf Coast of the United States.
The release of the new ecosystem assessment tool comes
on the heels of a recent report titled " The Year in Review: A
look at the events of 2020 through the lens of the NFPA Fire
& Life Safety Ecosystem. " Both the tool and report represent
ongoing efforts by NFPA to provide stakeholders with the
resources they need to understand and apply the ecosystem
in their daily roles.
Housewright said the 2020 year-in-review report is full of
instances of officials failing to address potential problems
until it's too late. " One incident that stands out is the ammonium
nitrate explosion that devastated Beirut, Lebanon,
last summer, " she said. " In that case, the stored ammonium
nitrate was a known hazard in the port and it simply wasn't
addressed. "
That theme, Housewright said, carries into seemingly
unrelated incidents like wildfire, where " there's a distinct
government responsibility to implement better polices ... but
the political will isn't there to actually do it. "
The assessment tool and report are both available online
at nfpa.org/ecosystem.
THIS SPREAD: ALL PHOTOS GETTY IMAGES EXCEPT ALABAMA BOAT FIRE, AP/WIDE WORLD
http://www.nfpa.org/ecosystem
NFPA Journal - Fall 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - Fall 2021
