We were curious why the comments had slowed down a bit, then we realized why. The darn thing was broken! The site wasn’t taking comments or allowing us to make new posts. We worked hard to resolve the issue, and we are happy to report that we are back up in operation.

In the future, anytime something on the site doesn’t seem to be working correctly, please drop us an email to give us the heads up. We may not already know about it (like this time.) Thanks for the patience, and the continued support.

This post has been removed due to unintended copyright issues. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Firefighter Stephen Steele from Milton Fire sent in this funny photo. The first picture is of a typical elevator lobby. The second picture is of the same lobby with a close-up of the sign above the extinguisher. Either the sign installer had a great sense of humor, or they were simply as dumb as a box of rocks. Here’s your sign:

Our friends over at TheBravestOnline.com have always been known for their great video productions, but this one takes the cake! This video is of a mayday situation that Houston Fire Department recently experienced. Our brothers in Houston were working a fire in a five story business occupancy with reports of multiple people missing. Everything was going well, and multiple rescues were performed. But something went terribly wrong, someone got lost…IT COULD HAPPEN TO ANYONE OF US! Fortunately there was a positive outcome. Special thanks go out to Houston Fire, Captain Abbt and TheBravestOnline.com for sharing this extremely beneficial training video.

Once the video begins you should be able to right click and view it at full screen.

While you watch this video, a million thoughts will be running through you head…Focus on the positive outcome, and use this video as the beneficial learning experience it needs to be.

The long over due update to the links page has finally been accomplished. We would like to take a moment to thank everyone who has taken the time and emailed requests to exchange links with us. If you have emailed us with your request please sure we have not unintentionally missed your link. We would also like to have everyone stop in and visit these updated sites.

Once again thank you to everyone who has been submitting ideas, suggestions and topics to be included on our site. We are diligently working to use as much of your material as possible. Please keep your submissions coming, and don’t get discouraged if we don’t use it right away. In addition, we have had some significant computer issues recently, and lost months worth of emails. So please feel free to re-submit any material we have not yet used. We should have some new and interesting information loaded soon so please keep visiting. Thanks again for the overwhelming support!

As with many building construction components, they just don’t make them like they used to. Sometimes this makes our job easier, and sometimes not so much. Here is something that’s a little different from years ago. Skylights are made very differently, and are now much stronger. This particular skylight is made with laminated glass. It has two pieces of ¼ glass with a thin layer of some fancy plastic in between them. They claim this glass can support 10,000psi. Under that extreme load the glass will obviously crack, but it will still support the entire 10,000psi. We were unable to test this out for ourselves, but we definitely noticed they are significantly stronger then the old style. It seems that the most efficient way through these types of skylights would be with a rotary saw, clearing it out with a hook is no longer an option.

Firefighter Chad Cox from Wichita Fire sent in this video of a basic demonstration of the through the lock method of forcing a residential door with a rim lock. The video shows a good technique to help determine exactly which lock is actually engaged. Just because one is locked, doesn’t mean all of them are locked, and there’s no reason to waste time on a lock that isn’t even engaged! It also has a great close-up of using the lock tool at the end.