NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 43

Emerging processes
and technologies
including cannabis
production (left)
and electric vehicles
(right) present new
safety concerns for an
array of stakeholders.
The NFPA Fire & Life
Safety Ecosystem can
help provide a bigpicture understanding
of events including the
2017 Grenfell Tower
fire in London (above),
which killed 72 people.

THE NFPA RESPONSE

Achieving a deeper understanding
through a safety ecosystem
Today's myriad connections and complexities have also generated a new way
of visualizing hazards: the NFPA Fire &
Life Safety Ecosystem™.
Introduced in 2018, the ecosystem
concept consists of eight interconnected parts-government responsibility,
development and use of current codes,
understanding reference standards, an
investment in safety, a skilled workforce,
code compliance, preparedness and
emergency response, and an informed
public. If any component is broken or
missing, the result can be a catastrophic
failure of the entire system. The ecosystem can be applied to any process or
event involving safety and security, from
a home fire to a cyberattack.
The ecosystem helps stakeholders
understand events like the Grenfell

Tower fire in London, which killed 72
people in 2017. Exterior building panels
made with a layer of highly combustible
foam insulation were blamed for the
rapid spread of fire up, across, and into
the 24-story apartment building. But the
magnitude of the disaster was in fact
the result of multiple failures of ecosystem components, including government
responsibility and code compliance.
The model can help the safety
community develop a big-picture view
of potential hazards, including those
associated with new or little-known
technologies, and take steps to mitigate
those hazards. " NFPA doesn't just react
to tragedy, " Pauley said. " We anticipate
the needs brought on by new technologies and innovation that require safety
practices. "

IN DECEMBER 1958, A FIRE AT
the Our Lady of the Angels School in
Chicago killed 92 children and three
nuns. Percy Bugbee, then NFPA's
general manager, was frank in his
assessment of the staggering loss.
" There are no new lessons to be learned
from this fire, " Bugbee reportedly told
an interviewer. " Only old lessons that
tragically went unheeded. "
It could be argued that most disasters, fire and otherwise, hold nothing
new for us, except for reminders of how
willing we are to ignore all of those
hard-earned old lessons. For the few
events that do present something new,
however, NFPA is ideally positioned to
define those new risks and to provide
guidance on avoiding them, a role it
has embraced for 125 years.
Despite the seismic shifts of the last
century-plus, NFPA's standards development process-open, transparent,
and thorough-remains much as it did
when the organization was launched.
" It's been refined and updated a few
times, " Dubay said. " We always try to
learn from our history: How is the
process working? What are the strong
points? Those kinds of questions have
led to better consensus across stakeholders, more transparency, broader,
more global participation, and ultimately stronger codes and standards. "
As it moves deeper into its second
century, NFPA will also tend the flame
of one of its most critical public services: keeping the old lessons alive and
well, with the aim of informing the
future of safety with the knowledge
gleaned from the past.
" That history and perspective are
essential to who we are at NFPA-but
that doesn't mean we plan to rest on
our laurels, " Pauley said. " Whether it's
the work we're doing to safeguard the
standards development process, the
creation and promotion of the Ecosystem, or our efforts to serve modern-day
practitioners through advancements
like NFPA LiNK, it's all about what
comes next. We have no intention of
slowing down. "
STEPHANIE SCHOROW is a Boston-based
writer and the author of Boston on Fire: A History
of Fires and Firefighting in Boston. Her new book,
The Great Boston Fire: The Inferno That Almost
Incinerated the City, is due out in the fall.

N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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NFPA Journal - Summer 2021

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