Thanks Zach.

Hello everybody, I'm Burns Hargis for another edition of Inside OSU. What kid has not wanted to ride on a fire truck

and be a part of this exciting

profession?

Well here at Oklahoma State, this is the best place in the world

that you can be trained. We're called the West Point of

fire

protection and safety.

This is a 1951 American LaFrance, which was

totally restored by our students

over the last year or two.

We'll go inside and see what goes on here, but we appreciate driver Zach Thompson from Seminole, OK. We'll talk to you

inside Zach.

Let's go have a look.

Here I am in the pump room of our fire protection and safety division and with me is Mike Larranaga, who's an

associate professor and is the head of this program. Mike, welcome.

This whole

program has been called a national treasure, and I think the history of its very interesting because most people are

surprised actually to see the extent

of the fire protection and safety programs we have at Oklahoma State. How'd it get started?

It got started when in 1931, the insurance industry call to Congress in Stillwater with the Stillwater fire department

to better train firefighters and validate the training that

firefighters have. Why Stillwater? The Fire Chief Ray Pence was

friends with several executives in the insurance underwriting industry.

I guess they had a lot of losses and wanted to figure out how to do a better job on the front end and in fighting the

fires. That's right.

So what happened?

As a result of that they start having a conference every year and that lead to

fire protection publications

and international fire service training association. They're the largest publisher of fire training materials in the

world.

And that also led to the academic program, which at that time was called the Department of Firemanship. This isn't a

common program in universities around the United States?

No, there are very few programs like ours.

How many?

There are two that are ABET accredited in the US. It's what's formally

known as the American Board of Engineering and Technology, and that's the accreditation that allows our students take the

professional engineering exam. How many students do you have?

We have 250 students. What is the academic curriculum for them generally?

We have a four-year program in engineering technology, and it's a basic engineering science courses and then we

tailor

a special course in fire protection safety and industrial hygiene for students.

This is not just fire? I mean it's broader than just fire? It's broader than fire. We really are

a loss prevention program, and we teach students to

prevent losses in the industry, manufacturing and

municipalities of government. So any kind of disaster in a building or on a ship or on an airplane

we're teaching our students how to prevent that, design them in a way that will prevent that and if it happens

what to do about it.

That's correct.

That's incredible.

What are the career opportunities? I would think in this day and age they'd be incredible.

We have

amazing career opportunities for students

and each student enjoys multiple job offers. Even in this down economy we don't have a problem placing students.

And just as I said this is a national treasurer, we actually

guard and protect some national treasures in the US? That's correct, well all around the world.

We are recognized for the contributions of our students in protecting

artistic and cultural treasures of the US. Some examples are the Smithsonian Institution, the Statue of Liberty,

the US Capitol complex, the Supreme Court building,

Library of Congress, the rare books collections at Yale

university and Harvard, and even OSU Edmon Low Library.

I know it's a very

dedicated and loyal alumni group because I hear from them a lot and they're very interested in this program and we're

interested in them as well. We'll look at some more things around here. The pump lab is for what? These are

installed in buildings and industrial facilities and things like

Boone Pickens Stadium.

And if the sprinkler's to be discharged or there's a fire,

the fire pump will turn on to deliver water to help control the fire until the fire department arrives.

So the students are learning how these things work and how they

are engineered?

That's right. How to design and install them,

take care of them,

and

keep buildings safe.

We also have a fire systems laboratory were students learned

about the different types of sprinkler control valves that we have.

In addition, we have a fire alarms lab

for students learn about the detection and alarm systems

for different types of fires

and different types of a detection such as smoke and heat.

Within these labs we have people that come from all over the world to take continuing education and outreach courses.

We probably have 30 to 40 courses a year

and these are professionals from

all over the world working in the fire and safety industries.

In this state-of-the-art facility, we have other

demonstration and labs in effect

for our students and one is the burn lab. This is one of the places where

you do what you're never supposed to do and that's set something on fire. That's right. We want to do it in a

controlled setting so no one gets hurt

and nothing burns down. Well we'll go into the burn lab now and see what that's all about.

Now I'm in the fire dynamic lab also known as the burn lab, but for these purposes we'll call it the burns lab.

I'm with Laura Gross and others from fire protection and safety. Let's introduce everybody right quick.

Benjamin Eschner from McHenry, IL.

What year are you?

I'm a junior.

Benjamin Craig. I'm from

Ohio. Patrice Barnett from Brighton, Colorado, and I'm a senior. Laura we'll talk to you in a second.

Andy Emerson from Chattanooga, TN, and I'm a sophomore.

This is our driver. This is the guy that brought in the American LaFrance.

I'm Zach Thompson from Seminole, OK, and I'm a senior.

We put out the fire didn't we?

I'm Erin Guyer from Stratford, Vermont.

I'm Rhett Strain from Beauty Springs, Louisiana, and I'm a junior.

Get the idea this is a national program? Laura, how did you end up

here in Oklahoma from

Salida, Colorado?

Originally I wanted to be a firefighter so my dad and I sat down and did some research

on where I could get a bachelors degree that would

better be of use

in the fire program.

So we found Oklahoma State and I moved down here and once I started classes

I realized there was more to the program than just firefighting

and now I would like to become a sprinkler designer. What do you think the career opportunities are?

I can go

safety or protection or firefighting.

The possibilities are endless.

Rhett,

this is a real ghostbusters outfit except the ghosts we'll bust are the fires.

We're in front of a set here, tell us about this. We've got a living room setting burn prop.

We've got a couch we'll place some flammable liquids on to imitate an arson fire.

We'll watch the growth stage,

take some temperature readings,

watching how fast different materials will react to the fluids and the heat of the fire

and watch this spread.

Good, well let's have a look.

Yeah I'm glad I didn't sit in the chair.

So Rhett what are you learning from this other than a chair's burning up?

We're watching the fire growth. It's going to go up, hit the

ceiling, spread across the couch itself. It'll start into the walls. You'll start hearing

picture frames breaking. We're also taking some measurements here

on our temperature scale.

This black line is our back wall

where the picture frame is.

We also have some ceiling on the east wall and the back wall.

As you can see

the wallpaper's starting to burn. These are all the types of measurements we're looking at.

Is that wall built like a regular wall? Yes, the only thing missing in this wall is insulation just because of

the toxins in it.

You can feel some of that radiant heat.

You'll also start to get

trash cans and things like that around it to burn.

It's now hit the ceiling and

starting to rollout. In arson investigations, can they tell

where a fire started? Yes. Origin is fairly easy to tell. You'll have heat.

The glass just broke from our

picture frame at high temperatures. But you can tell point of origin because of the amount

of heat,

and things are charred fairly well.

It's putting out a lot of heat, I'll tell you that. It does get fairly warm and once we're done you can go through and

look at the records. Our west wall right now we're at about 1500 degrees. That's a tremendous

amount of heat.

In the ceiling we're about 2000 so at the top

you're looking at about 2000 degrees. But we'll go ahead and step back and let these guys attack the fire.

You guys started to spray up high. Yes sir. Depending on the types of fire,

you'll either

attack it high or low.

With a ventilated fire you want to cool the upper atmosphere because you have a place for that temperature and steam

building up because boiling water will put off steam.

At 2000 degrees you'll steam water fairly fast and that's where you're heat's going.

So you'll attack it high

and let that steam work down on top of it.

Well as you can see,

it's a pretty dramatic profession and were glad they are studying it.

OSU has a long history of protecting the public from fires and other disasters,

and this fire protection and safety unit here at OSU

is the true leader.

A national treasure.

So for Mike Larranaga and all these students,

that's another edition of Inside OSU,

We'll see you next time.