About the Author

Benjamin Walker is a globally acclaimed presenter and international compartment firefighting instructor. He started his career in the Metropolitan Tyne & Wear Fire Brigade, working and commanding some of Europe's busiest fire stations. Following a spell at a small rural fire department, he took a study sabbatical in the United States, obtaining several fire service certifications and studying FEMA's Emergency Management qualifications. Returning to the UK to train the London Fire Brigade in compartment firefighting, he was recognised by the Institution of Fire Engineers, winning the Godiva Award and subsequent works and contributions led to award of the Fellowship of the Institution aged 40. He has had operational spells at Fire EMS departments in the USA including riding out with Chicago Fire Department, Newport FD and studying Emergency Medicine at Roger Williams University, Providence, Rhode Island. In demand as a presenter and instructor, he has taught on multiple occasions at the world's largest conference, FDIC in Indianapolis, and remains determined in his pursuit of reducing firefighter line of duty deaths worldwide. He appears as a firefighting subject expert for Sky News, BBC, Russia Today and many other media outlets, writing for The Guardian, FIRE, Fire Risk Management, Fire Engineering and more. Shan Raffel has served as a career firefighter in Brisbane Australia since 1983. His career took a serious change in 1994 after two of his colleagues were killed in the line of duty while conducting fighting operations in a relatively routine fire in a small motorcycle dealership. The Coroner's report was unable to identify the cause of two extreme fire events that cause severe burns, dislocating them from the hose line and rendering them unconscious. In 1996, two other colleagues were seriously injured after being caught in an extreme fire event while conducting search and rescue operations in a smoke-laden section of a Backpackers Hostel in Rockhampton. These events motivated him to develop an extensive report that led to an international study of compartment fire behaviour training (CFBT) in 1997. He studied at the leading training institutions in Sweden and the UK. Over the next three years, he developed the first nationally recognized CFBT program in Australia. Subsequently, he has assisted numerous fire services around the world in the development of their training facilities, instructors, and teaching materials. In 2009 he was awarded a "Churchill Fellowship" to research "Planning Preparation and Response to Emergencies in Tunnels". This resulted in an intensive ten-week international research tour. This included leading fire services, training centres and tunnel operators in the USA (FDNY), Canada, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland. This knowledge was critical in the development of emergency response plans for the 3 largest road tunnels in Australia. His international training experience spans 26 countries, and his International Compartment Fire Behaviour Instructors program gained international credentialing through the Institution of Fire Engineers recognition process in 2018. www.linkedin.com/in/shanraffel

Reviews

Dan StephensChief Fire and Rescue Advisor and Inspector at Welsh Government I am very grateful to Ben and Shan for the opportunity to write the foreword for Edition 2 of Fire Dynamics for Firefighters. It is something I very much wanted to do with Edition 1, but circumstances conspired against me preventing me from doing so at the time.Fire Dynamics for Firefighters is a book written for Firefighters by Firefighters. It presents scientific and technical material in a simple and easily digestible format. I would very much have valued having it available to me as a recruit Firefighter and through the formative stages of my career, in particular when studying for exams. Irrespective of the point you are at in your career it is a must have for any Firefighter. It provides highly effective underpinning knowledge to compliment National Operational Guidance and will undoubtedly improve the situational awareness and therefore the safety of any Firefighter who reads it. As a serving Chief Fire Officer Edition 1 was a publication I strongly recommended colleagues to read and I maintain that view to this day with Edition 2 which has been enhanced further still by Ben and Shan. As someone who has the same passion and enthusiasm for my profession today as I did as a recruit I can't praise Ben and Shan highly enough for the contribution they have made to Firefighter safety through Fire Dynamics for Firefighters and the related publications in the series. I am sure you will derive the same value from their great work as I know I have.