NFPA Journal - January/February 2013 - (Page 4)

>> FIRSTWORD BY NFPA PRESIDENT JAMES M. SHANNON BOARD OF DIRECTORS OFFICERS Chief Philip C. Stittleburg Chair La Farge Fire Department La Farge, Wisconsin Ernest J. Grant First Vice-Chair North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center Chapel Hill, North Carolina Philip J. DiNenno Second Vice-Chair Hughes Associates, Inc. Baltimore, Maryland Randolph W. Tucker Secretary ccrd partners Houston, Texas H. Wayne Boyd Treasurer U.S. Safety & Engineering Corporation Sacramento, California James M. Shannon President President and CEO, NFPA *Bruce H. Mullen Staff Officer Sr. Vice-President and CFO, NFPA *Dennis J. Berry Assistant Secretary Secretary of the Corporation, Director of Licensing, NFPA dIRECTORS Thomas W. Jaeger Past Chair Jaeger and Associates, LLC Great Falls, Virginia Terms Expire in 2013 Donald R. Cook Shelby County Department of Development Services Pelham, Alabama John C. Dean Office of Maine State Fire Marshal Augusta, Maine Chief Rebecca F. Denlinger Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Chief Ned Pettus, Jr. Columbus Division of Fire Columbus, Ohio Dean L. Seavers Pinecrest, Florida Keith E. Williams Underwriters Laboratories Inc. Northbrook, Illinois Terms Expire in 2014 Amy Acton The Phoenix Society Grand Rapids, Michigan James M. Clark Management Consultant Germantown, Tennessee Kwame Cooper Los Angeles Fire Department Los Angeles, California Julie A. Rochman IBHS Tampa, Florida Terms Expire in 2015 Peter Holland Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Lancashire, United Kingdom Brian Hurley Palm Beach, Florida William McCammon East Bay Regional Communications System Authority Dublin, California Harold A. Schaitberger International Assoc. of Fire Fighters Washington, D.C. William A. Stewart Toronto Fire Services (retired) Toronto, Ontario, Canada Peter J. Gore Willse XL GAPS Hartford, Connecticut Access + Mission For the last century, local, state, and federal governments have relied on private non-profit organizations like NFPA to develop the codes that are adopted into law to protect public safety. The cost of developing the codes is covered not by taxpayers but by the standards organizations themselves, who recover those costs through their ownership of the copyrights in the codes and standards. Even though we own those copyrights, NFPA strives to make its documents as accessible as possible, because we believe this is the best way to accomplish our mission. For more than 10 years, NFPA has about our free access policy, because we have always been convinced that a greater understanding of NFPA codes and standards will improve fire and electrical safety for everyone. NFPA is proud to have been the first organization to have taken this bold step of creating free public access to privately developed codes and standards, and we are happy to see other organizations following our lead. There are some who argue that we should do more and immediately make all of our documents available online without any restrictions. Taking that course of action would be suicidal, however, since most of the money we need to fund our process and other vital ONLINE EXCLUSIVE mission activities comes from the Jim Shannon discusses free access to NFPA sale of codes. It has also been suggested that codes and standards, and offers a recap of we ask the industries that use 2012 and a preview of the year ahead for the our documents to pay for their association, at nfpa.org/codeaccess. development. This would also create significant problems, since offered free access to all of our codes and one of the beauties of the system as it has standards on our website; to read a curalways existed is that it provides us with an rent edition of any NFPA code or standard, independent source of revenue. Nobody simply sign in at nfpa.org/freeaccess. This can influence us by threatening to withhold is a read-only site—documents cannot be funds, because our system is funded not by downloaded or printed, because we cannot a few big interests but by the thousands of survive without the revenues from people users who pay for their copies of the code. who want to own their own copies. But for As the Internet emerged, there was a fear users who need to familiarize themselves it could damage organizations like NFPA, with a code or check a requirement, this and we still worry that misguided legal or kind of access is invaluable. It should also public policy decisions could lead to the satisfy the wishes of those who feel that, destruction of a system responsible for as a matter of legal principle, all mandated countless improvements to safety stanregulatory requirements should be available dards. Even so, we decided long ago to view online at no charge to the public. this revolution in information technology We have invited the agencies responsible not as a threat but as an opportunity to fulfor code promulgation in every state to link fill our mission on a grander scale than to NFPA’s free access site, and we hope that anyone could have imagined. Free access to federal agencies will, too. We will do all NFPA codes and standards was the first we can to make sure that the public knows great step in realizing that ambition. 4 NFPA JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013 Photograph: dave Yount/NFPA *Not a member of the Board of Directors http://www.nfpa.org/codeaccess http://www.nfpa.org/freeaccess

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - January/February 2013

NFPA Journal - January/february 2013
Contents
First Word
In a Flash
Perspectives
Firewatch
Research
Heads Up
Structural Ops
In Compliance
Buzzwords
Outreach
Electrical Safety
Wildfire Watch
Rebuilding a Hospital
Prepping for the Worst
Chicago View: A Preview of the 2013 NFPA Conference & Expo
Long Time Coming
Section Spotlight
What’s Hot
Looking Back

NFPA Journal - January/February 2013