FE Volume 140 Issue 6

Marathon meetings in Cincinnati during May moved the American Society for Testing and Materials closer to issuing the first set of independent standards for emergency medical services. The panels considered both positive and negative comments on proposed standards for EMS equipment; terminology; and personnel, education, and training for all levels of prehospital care providers.

Western Wisconsin Technical Institute, in La Crosse, Wisc., is a post-secondary institution that provides vocational, technical, and adult education in more than 60 programs. Through its fire service program, WWTI offers courses and fire training to 60 fire departments within an 11-county district.

Hazardous materials information will pour into fire departments, local emergency planning commissions, and state planning commissions by October 17 because of new federal right-toknow requirements. And the International Association of Fire Chiefs says it will take a national clearinghouse to keep public officials' heads above the paperwork flood.

Tools and data measurement methods from the Center for Fire Research could slash this nation's fire safety costs by $7 billion to $8 billion a year within a decade, says a separate organization that's fighting to keep the center and its budget intact. The Reagan administration proposes merging CFR—whose work centers on characterizing fire and creating computer models that predict its behavior—with a second arm of the National Bureau of Standards, the Center for Building Technology, whose work concerns making buildings safer and more economical.