When we think about the role of the fire service, our first thought is probably “putting out fires”, but what about all those other emergencies that we encounter in life?
For example;
- You’re held up on the motorway due to a tanker spill
- You accidently break a thermometer in your rental house and mercury is now all over the carpet
- An old warehouse has been involved in a fire and you are finding what looks like asbestos material in your garden
- Your nan decides to really give that bathroom a good clean, pours all the cleaning agents she owns into the bath and is now not feeling well
- You’ve come across some legacy chemical containers on your site at work and they now appear to be swelled and/or smoke is starting to emanate from them.
These are just some examples of the unforeseen circumstances that the fire service find themselves responding to on a regular basis. So how do they go about deciding what to do to resolve the incident?
In this talk Dr. Sarah Bergin will look at the science behind the decisions that are made at some of these incidents, e.g. physical properties, impact on the environment, danger to people in this emergency phase.
Dr. Sarah Bergin has been working as a scientific consultant for the past three and a half years, training both the fire service and industrial clients about hazard and chemical management. She is part of an on-call team, providing scientific advice to emergency responders at incidents like those mentioned above. Sarah has a PhD in engineering photonics (which has pretty much no relevance to her role as a scientific advisor, but did allow her to spend 3 years playing with lasers!)
This is an online event hosted via Zoom – Register for FREE via Eventbrite
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