Browsing by Subject "Fires"

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    Alcohol skin preparation causes surgical fires.
    (Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 2012-03) Rocos, B; Donaldson, LJ

    Introduction

    Surgical fires are a rare but serious preventable safety risk in modern hospitals. Data from the US show that up to 650 surgical fires occur each year, with up to 5% causing death or serious harm. This study used the National Reporting and Learning Service (NRLS) database at the National Patient Safety Agency to explore whether spirit-based surgical skin preparation fluid contributes to the cause of surgical fires.

    Methods

    The NRLS database was interrogated for all incidents of surgical fires reported between 1 March 2004 and 1 March 2011. Each report was scrutinised manually to discover the cause of the fire.

    Results

    Thirteen surgical fires were reported during the study period. Of these, 11 were found to be directly related to spirit-based surgical skin preparation or preparation soaked swabs and drapes.

    Conclusions

    Despite manufacturer's instructions and warnings, surgical fires continue to occur. Guidance published in the UK and US states that spirit-based skin preparation solutions should continue to be used but sets out some precautions. It may be that fire risk should be included in pre-surgical World Health Organization checklists or in the surgical training curriculum. Surgical staff should be aware of the risk that spirit-based skin preparation fluids pose and should take action to minimise the chance of fire occurring.
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    Low-severity fire as a mechanism of organic matter protection in global peatlands: Thermal alteration slows decomposition.
    (Global change biology, 2020-07) Flanagan, Neal E; Wang, Hongjun; Winton, Scott; Richardson, Curtis J
    Worldwide, regularly recurring wildfires shape many peatland ecosystems to the extent that fire-adapted species often dominate plant communities, suggesting that wildfire is an integral part of peatland ecology rather than an anomaly. The most destructive blazes are smoldering fires that are usually initiated in periods of drought and can combust entire peatland carbon stores. However, peatland wildfires more typically occur as low-severity surface burns that arise in the dormant season when vegetation is desiccated, and soil moisture is high. In such low-severity fires, surface layers experience flash heating, but there is little loss of underlying peat to combustion. This study examines the potential importance of such processes in several peatlands that span a gradient from hemiboreal to tropical ecozones and experience a wide range of fire return intervals. We show that low-severity fires can increase the pool of stable soil carbon by thermally altering the chemistry of soil organic matter (SOM), thereby reducing rates of microbial respiration. Using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared, we demonstrate that low-severity fires significantly increase the degree of carbon condensation and aromatization of SOM functional groups, particularly on the surface of peat aggregates. Laboratory incubations show lower CO2 emissions from peat subjected to low-severity fire and predict lower cumulative CO2 emissions from burned peat after 1-3 years. Also, low-severity fires reduce the temperature sensitivity (Q10 ) of peat, indicating that these fires can inhibit microbial access to SOM. The increased stability of thermally altered SOM may allow a greater proportion of organic matter to survive vertical migration into saturated and anaerobic zones of peatlands where environmental conditions physiochemically protect carbon stores from decomposition for thousands of years. Thus, across latitudes, low-severity fire is an overlooked factor influencing carbon cycling in peatlands, which is relevant to global carbon budgets as climate change alters fire regimes worldwide.
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    Managing wildfire events: risk-based decision making among a group of federal fire managers.
    (Risk Anal, 2011-05) Wilson, Robyn S; Winter, Patricia L; Maguire, Lynn A; Ascher, Timothy
    Managing wildfire events to achieve multiple management objectives involves a high degree of decision complexity and uncertainty, increasing the likelihood that decisions will be informed by experience-based heuristics triggered by available cues at the time of the decision. The research reported here tests the prevalence of three risk-based biases among 206 individuals in the USDA Forest Service with authority to choose how to manage a wildfire event (i.e., line officers and incident command personnel). The results indicate that the subjects exhibited loss aversion, choosing the safe option more often when the consequences of the choice were framed as potential gains, but this tendency was less pronounced among those with risk seeking attitudes. The subjects also exhibited discounting, choosing to minimize short-term over long-term risk due to a belief that future risk could be controlled, but this tendency was less pronounced among those with more experience. Finally, the subjects, in particular those with more experience, demonstrated a status quo bias, choosing suppression more often when their reported status quo was suppression. The results of this study point to a need to carefully construct the decision process to ensure that the uncertainty and conflicting objectives inherent in wildfire management do not result in the overuse of common heuristics. Individual attitudes toward risk or an agency culture of risk aversion may counterbalance such heuristics, whereas increased experience may lead to overconfident intuitive judgments and a failure to incorporate new and relevant information into the decision.