Cover Photo: Krystyna Krakowski, far left, and her team at Palm Beach Gardens Fire Rescue. I remember attending a fire conference and the topic was Safety and Apparatus Response. A side discussion started regarding beating a first due company to their own call. The engineer joked that he carried business cards and said he would place them on t...

In this edition of Preserving the Perishable, I thought I would explain the do's and don'ts of photograph preservation briefly. As a historian and a genealogist, I frequently see the results of improper photograph archiving and how it destroys the precious history that we treasure. I remember, at the passing of my grandparents, shoe boxes and album...

During a recent zoom meeting, the participants, including myself, shared stories of historically significant items being discarded by fire departments. Often, it's personnel unfamiliar with the fire service's history and in a well-meaning attempt to do their part in cleaning up the station, they begin to discard things into the dumpster. They may n...

As a member of the fire service community, so many of us tend to naturally become collectors. Whether it be books, toys, models, hose appliances, or even up to and including antique apparatus, the fire service offers a little something for everyone. If you aren't a collector of something, I would venture a guess you just haven't been around the fir...

    Former Air Force Academy Chief Ernst Piercy has been named to the Board of Trustees for the National Fire Heritage Center Ernst is a retired fire chief, with more than 35 years in the fire service. Most recently, he served as the Regional Fire Chief for Navy Region Southwest in San Diego, California. Previously, he...

The National Fire Heritage Center recently received two very generous donations of storage equipment and historic texts. Flat files The NFHC was pleased to receive four flat files donated by Jay Livingston of Livingston Fire Protection. The files are ideal for preserving large old-time photos, drawings, posters and even smalls (stored in acid-free ...

The American fire service is fascinating in terms of the breadth of its history, the richness of its traditions, and the deeply embedded values and beliefs of those that serve this profession. The National Fire Heritage Center (NFHC) exists precisely to document and hold in trust the history and culture of the American Fire Service for future gener...

A fire that swept through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, on May 28, 1977, killed 162 people and injured more than 100. As a result of this tragedy, national fire codes for public assembly occupancies were changed to require — for the first time — fire alarm and fire sprinkler systems to help prevent such an event from happeni...