Canada’s wireless providers are preparing for an update to the National Public Alerting System that will force smartphones to sound an ominous alarm when an emergency alert is triggered. In case of emergencies including Amber Alerts, forest fires, natural disasters, terrorist attacks or severe weather, officials will be able to send a localized alert that will compel compatible phones on an LTE network to emit an alarm — the same shrill beeping that accompanies TV and radio emergency alerts — and display a bilingual text warning. …”People cannot opt out of this,” said CRTC spokesperson Patricia Valladao. “There is a high importance that people — want it or not — receive these alerts.” …Similar alerting systems are already in place in other countries including the U.S.
On 18 October, 2017, a logger was killed in a tragic incident near Mackenzie in northern British Columbia, Canada. The operator was using a feller buncher to cut timber on a slope when the machine tipped over backwards, cutting off his escape route when the machine caught fire. The logger’s death was devastating for his family, his community and his co-workers. While the cause of the incident is still under investigation by WorkSafeBC, the question arises: What can we do now to try to prevent this from happening again? That was one of the key issues discussed when WorkSafeBC’s Forest Industry Advisory Group met in November 2017 to talk about concrete steps that employers can take to make remote mechanized logging safer. Here are some of the considerations discussed.
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Investigators are trying to figure out the cause of a fire that ripped through several townhouses that were under construction in Innisfil. Large flames tore through five units at Friday Harbour on Tuesday night. Officials say the fire had been burning for some time before Innisfil firefighters arrived on scene. “It was a very difficult fire. The five townhomes were under construction with varying level of completion. Some units didn’t even have drywall all the way up, so once the fire got into the wood it spread very fast,” says fire chief Jon Pegg. The chief says crews went inside, but the stairway had burned down and the flames moved to the roof. The homes don’t have all of their fire safety features built in yet, such as firewalls between units.
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Nowadays, fewer homes catch fire than in the past. However, when they do, they burn hotter, faster and more dangerously than ever before. Modern structure fires burn eight times faster than fires in the past few decades. …George continues to explain that the size of an average home has increased about 56% since the 1970s. In addition to that, there have been major changes to the way modern homes are constructed. …open concept floor-plans have also seen a major spike in popularity. “This creates an environment inside where the fire has much more space to grow,” he explains. …One of the largest components to the spread of modern fires is the fuel that now exists inside our homes. “We’ve transitioned away from primarily organic materials, meaning wood, cotton, wool, furs, to much more synthetic or man-made materials,” George says, “…These modern fuels have two to three times the amount of energy as their legacy counterparts.” 
The PBS program Newshour aired a story Thursday night reporting on interviews with dozens of U.S. Forest Service female employees, many of them firefighters. The women gave numerous examples of gender discrimination, bullying, sexual harassment, and assault by crew members and supervisors. Three women said they were raped by fellow employees. … The statement below was issued by Dan Jiron, the Department of Agriculture’s Acting Deputy Undersecretary of Natural Resources and the Environment:The stories the Forest Service employees shared during the PBS NewsHour piece are important to hear, difficult and heart-wrenching as they may be. Stories like these, which have come to light over the past few years, have underscored that there are elements of sexual harassment in the Forest Service that have existed and continue today. While we have taken significant actions over the past several years to address sexual harassment in the Forest Service, we acknowledge that we have more work to do. 
Workshops to cover truck rollover, load restraint risks and Chain of Responsibility issues. Safety workshops for forestry contractors will take place across Queensland, Tasmania, New South Wales and South Australia in coming months as part of a campaign hosted by the Australian Forestry Contractors Association (AFCA). AFCA general manager Stacey Gardiner tells ATN that the three-hour workshops …provide training on truck rollover, load restraint risks and Chain of Responsibility. The training modules, developed in consultation with engineering firm Engistics, are expected to be rolled out to more than 300 operators and loaders across the forestry supply chain. …”Industry participants have commented that this has allowed them to improve their understanding of Chain of Responsibility laws and hear about recent research and findings regarding key risks specific to industry, especially relating to load restraint,” she said.
NEW ZEALAND — Forest safety, improving productivity and getting workers off the felling site has been a major push for forestry managers, forest owners, logging contractors and equipment suppliers to modify their wood harvesting operations over the last few years. Another major driver to increased mechanisation has been the skilled machine operator shortages that many forestry companies are now currently facing. The ultimate goal of the industry is to have “no worker on the slope, or no hand on the chainsaw”. …Firstly, a myriad of new designs and operations, including vision systems for remote operation of equipment, have been introduced to extract wood safely off steeper slopes. More recently, tele-operation of wood extraction has successfully been trialled in New Zealand where the operator is sitting separately and away from the felling and log extraction operations.