School fire drills are quickly becoming insignificant and inconvenient to school administrators. When the time for the monthly fire drill rolls around, it is often performed with a "let's get this over with" attitude. Although all schools conduct fire drills, seldom do they effectively train students and staff members how to respond in a real…

This report is part of a series of reports that provides information on the structure, function, finances, taxation, employment, and pension systems of the United States' approximately 90,000 state and local governments. This report presents data on state and local government employment and payroll based on information collected by the 2013 Annual…

If one word can characterize what may be troubling about risk management in today's schools, it is "complacency." Complacency is a negative behavior that could entrap people into letting their guard down. In "The School Business Administrator," authors Kenneth Stevenson and Don Tharpe write: "A successful school business administrator has a…

Creating opportunities for students to actively apply hazards theory to real-life situations is often a challenge in hazards geography courses. This article presents a project, the Jocko Lakes Fire Project, that implemented learning strategies to encourage students to be active in wildfire hazards research. Wildfire hazards stand out as an…

This article describes a unique use of social workers as crisis response team (CRT) members in a nontraditional host setting, municipal fire departments in Arizona. The role of modern-day firefighters has changed dramatically and now includes responding to a wide variety of crises and emergencies other than fires, such as motor vehicle accidents,…

Objective: This study investigated the association between mindfulness, other resilience resources, and several measures of health in 124 urban firefighters. Method: Participants completed health measures of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, depressive symptoms, physical symptoms, and alcohol problems and measures of resilience…

For more than 15 years, preschool programs nationwide have worked with Fireproof Children/Prevention First, an international center for injury prevention research and education, to bring fire safety education to young children and their families. The "play safe! be safe!"[R] curriculum includes lessons that young children can learn and understand,…

Imminent danger, managing the unexpected, dealing with the aftereffects of danger and potential trauma, and repeating this intense cycle is part of the military, first responders (police, fire fighters, wild land firefighting crews, EMTs, and paramedics), and emergency management organizations regular mission. Members of these organizations…

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been known by other names and not well studied prior to returning Vietnam veterans who suffered psychological dysfunction. However, the term PTSD became part of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders in 1981. Since that time PTSD has been researched extensively in veterans. However,…

A significant number of children and adolescents engage in deliberate fire setting, beyond the scope of curiosity and experimentation. Interventions developed to respond to the needs of such fire setters generally involve educational and/or psychosocial approaches. Research evaluating the effectiveness of these interventions is dominated by…

The effective teaching of fire investigation skills presents logistical challenges because of the difficulty of providing students with access to suitable fire damaged buildings so that they can undertake authentic investigation tasks. At Charles Sturt University (CSU), in the subject JST415, "Fire Investigation Cause and Origin…

Differences between fire department and police department personnel (N = 190) concerning work-related stressors and depression were examined with regard to gender and relationship status. Participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II (A. T. Beck, R. A. Steer, & G. K. Brown, 1996) and the Distressing Event Questionnaire (E. S. Kubany,…

This paper examines gender differences in awareness, preparedness and attitudes towards bushfire amongst landholders in rural landscapes affected by amenity-led in-migration in southeast Australia. It considers the potential of conceptualising bushfire not as a gender-neutral natural phenomenon but as an important means by which traditional gender…

Fire service field staff instructors seek and share information and use information sources during their instructional work of teaching, training and curriculum development. This study is the first attempt to study their information-seeking and sharing behaviors, which have not previously been investigated empirically. Twenty-five fire service…

Background: Violence at a school can have a negative impact on the health of students, teachers, administrators, and others associated with the school and surrounding community. The use of weapons in school buildings or on school grounds accounts for the majority of violent deaths, particularly among males. This national trend suggests the need…