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Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Fire in the 'Luna' Nightclub in Edinburgh, Hogmanay 2008-09

This 'YouTube' footage (below) gives an interesting insight into human behaviour in fire. The BBC news website described the incident (in the early hours of 1st January 2009) as follows:
Fireworks cause fire at nightclub

About 400 people had to be evacuated from an Edinburgh nightclub after indoor pyrotechnics set fire to plastic netting stretched across the ceiling.

The netting melted and fell on to the crowd below, slightly burning two women and a member of staff.

They were treated at the scene but were not taken to hospital.

The fire broke out on the ground floor of the Luna nightclub in Picardy Place, just after midnight. Fire officers are investigating.
What the news report doesn't say is that most of the people there didn't evacuate. They stayed to watch the roof burning. Some even started singing the club anthem "the roof is on fire"!



Comment from SW:
"Would be interesting to know whether it was clear to occupants that the fire was not going to spread, i.e. ceiling itself apparently non-combustible. If this was not the case then it is quite scary to see the lack of awareness of an impending disaster, after similar fires have lend to multiple fatalities. Fire awareness training needed?!"

Monday, February 23, 2009

Mott MacDonald presents opportunities in Fire Engineering to students



Mott MacDonald will present opportunities in Fire Engineering to students of the University of Edinburgh

Date and time of event: Monday 2nd March, 1pm - 2pm.
Venue: Sanderson Drawing Office, Sanderson Building, KB.

Mott MacDonald's £900 million business spans 120 countries with 14,500 staff working in all sectors from transport, energy, buildings, water and the environment to health and education, industry and communications.

Mott MacDonald is holding an informal lunch presentation to discuss Fire Engineering opportunities. There will be a short presentation covering the company, recent projects and graduate opportunities followed by any questions.

More information at Careers Service

Friday, February 06, 2009

Visit our Youtube channel in Fire Safety Engineering

Our Youtube channel, launched in Oct 2007, now hosts more than 36 videos of presentations, seminars and events related to our work on Fire Safety Engineering. By Feb 2009, the videos had collectively already been seen more that 2,500 times.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FireSafetyEngineerin&view=videos

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Visit of Dr Manzello from NIST


Dr Sam Manzello, from the Fire Research Division of NIST, visit the group and gave a seminar at the University of Edinburgh on Feb 3, 2009 presenting his experimental work on firebrands and structure ignition mechanisms in wildland-urban interface fires.

Dr Manzello is a dynamic and successful researcher bridging the gaps between combustion, fire and structural engineering. His unconventional expertise and original approach to fire problems was very well received by the group.