Fire Research Division News Today

Spontaneous combustion occurs through a reaction called oxidation, which releases heat that leads to ignition. Coal, hay, and oil all do it. But can your body?

After New York City’s deadliest fire in decades, Mayor Eric Adams said on Monday that the door to the apartment where the blaze started may have failed to close as it was supposed to.

Smoke displaces the oxygen that people need to stay conscious and is the leading cause of fire deaths across the nation.

Christmas tree fires account for millions in damages and multiple deaths nationwide every year. Help prevent disaster by watering your Christmas tree this year.

Credit: NIST Adam Jacoff has been a robotics research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) since 1988. His research has focused on developing a variety of new robotic capabilities and designing comprehensive suites of tests to foster innovation throughout the robotics community to help keep emergency responders out of harm’s way. Adam, along with the NIST Emergency Response Robotics team, is a finalist for a Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Meda...

Credit: U.S. Army The U.S. Army uses NIST’s PROFISSY computer program to help understand the performance and calculate the maximum charging pressure for this automatic fire extinguishing system, which protects the crew in an armored ground vehicle from explosive fires. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new, interactive spreadsheet that will help the U.S. military extinguish aircraft and vehicle fires using the latest environmen...