• TEMPEST TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. The family-owned company manufactures positive pressure Power Blowers and is a proponent of positive pressure ventilation and attack. The company began as a small operation of two men, Dexter Coffman and Don Hamman, working to design a safer, higher performance inflator fan that hot air balloonists use to inflate their balloons. Shortly after, the owners found another use for their tool-helping firefighters replace the potentially deadly environment surrounding a fire to one that could sustain life. The company now provides tools such as its Power Blower, VentMaster chainsaw, MVU, Shadow Smoke Machine, and Tempest Fireco Tower around the world, with products being used by fire departments in North America, Asia, Europe, and Australia.
• TYCO FIRE PROTECTION PRODUCTS (TYCO), producer of the ANSUL brand, is celebrating 100 years in commercial fire suppression at the company’s Marinette, Wisconsin, facility. The business is commemorating its centennial through ongoing events and by giving back to the community that helped it flourish. Tyco’s Marinette location opened its doors as the Bastol Sales Company in 1912, specializing in producing cattle feed. In 1915, Frank Hood bought the company and renamed it ANSUL to reflect its primary product-a refrigerant chemical-laying the foundation for what was to become one of the largest fire protection companies in the world. The 350-acre Marinette facility currently employs nearly 750 people.
• RICHARD A. MASON, CFO, was honored with the Ronny Jack Coleman Leadership Legacy Award during the recent Center for Public Safety Excellence’s annual awards ceremony held in Denver, Colorado. Mason’s career started with the Lebanon (NH) Fire Department, where he served as a call firefighter and career firefighter and was promoted to captain. He became the deputy chief of training in Nashua, New Hampshire, until moving on as the deputy chief of operations for the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, before being appointed director of the New Hampshire Division of Fire Standards and Training, which is the state organization tasked with delivering all firefighter training. During his tenure with the Division of Fire Standards and Training, many accomplishments were made that advanced the health and safety of firefighters and ensured new firefighters and officers had the training needed to perform the job well. Mason helped find a permanent funding solution for the fire academy that allowed growth commensurate with the needs of all firefighters. This included constructing a state-of-the-art fire academy that serves as the anchor for all fire programs.
• KME has added Safe Industries to its sales representative network. Safe Industries’ home office is located in Piedmont, South Carolina, and will handle sales and service for KME products in both North and South Carolina. Safe Industries was founded in 2005 by Al Willimon. Today, in addition to the full line of KME apparatus, Safe Industries offers both in-house and mobile services, as well as mobile pump testing, to its customers from its 36,000-square-foot Piedmont, South Carolina, location. The company also has a 13,500-square-foot location in the Nashville, Tennessee, area for loose equipment sales and service. Safe Industries’ major equipment brands include MSA, Akron, Genesis, Globe, Paratech, and 511.
• CUTTERS EDGE President Thomas Ruzich has announced that the company received ISO-9001 Certification for the quality management systems used at its headquarters and manufacturing facility in Baker City, Oregon.
• PIERCE MANUFACTURING recently announced that Atlantic Emergency Solutions is the new Pierce apparatus dealer for North Carolina, expanding its current territory that includes Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia, and portions of West Virginia. Atlantic Emergency Solutions’ corporate offices are based in Manassas, Virginia. The company comprises 157 employees who offer sales support, parts and service capabilities, around-the-clock roadside assistance, master trained technicians, and customer training.
• HARRIS CORPORATION congratulates the 12 appointees named to the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) Board by the Department of Commerce Acting Secretary Rebecca Blank in August. FirstNet, an independent authority within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), is charged by law to take “all actions necessary” to build, deploy, and operate the future nationwide public safety broadband network (NPSBN). “We commend the NTIA on its selection of these noteworthy FirstNet board members, who all possess a deep bench of experience and admiration from peers in their respective fields,” says Steve Marschilok, president, Harris Public Safety and Professional Communications. “This is a great sign of progress in building out the NPSBN. Now, we turn our attention to supporting the FirstNet board as it takes on the immense task of creating an interoperable nationwide network-one that will leverage technologies of multiple vendors to deliver a seamless, secure, next generation broadband user experience for our country’s first responders.”
• THE FIRE APPARATUS MANUFACTURERS ASSOC- IATION (FAMA) has awarded its 2012 Phillip L. Turner Fire Protection Scholarship to University of Maryland student Kenneth Hamburger. Hamburger, a senior from Baltimore, Maryland, majoring in the field of fire protection engineering, received a $5,000 scholarship in recognition of his outstanding academic achievement and commitment to the fire service. The award is given annually by FAMA and has been sponsored, since 2009, by FAMA member Akron Brass Co., a manufacturer of firefighting and rescue equipment. A presentation was made at the FAMA Technical Committee meeting in Denver, Colorado.
