as always: http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/calendar
It is best to read this journal from the beginning. . .
http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2006/02/08/
it makes more sense then. ....
or just explore the journal at: http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com
may i recommend: http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/01/04/
and a follow up to that: http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/10/12/
and I do not know him and he does not know me - but it seems through Harvard our existences are intertwined; therefore, noting this is not an endorsement either way, but in the need to ask the readership of this journal to remain vigilent (as the bush leage asked of america but not for it's bad influence on america), I ask readers to keep abreast of www.whitehouse.gov and to help make sure Obama and his harvard teams stays the course they claim to be on. . . for HUMFErs are in his ears as they are in mine - see previous entries. . .
http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/calendar

help one another if you can. . .
-------------------------------------------

from boston.com:

ADRIAN WALKER
Free labor has a cost
By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist | February 5, 2007

About 10 days ago, the Department of Public Safety had a chore on its hands that required a small labor force.

The agency had a collection of old bounced checks that officials were ready to have shredded. They could have hired a private company to handle the work, but they called instead on a free labor force.

A group of prisoners from the Boston Pre-Release Center was taken over to One Ashburton Place and assigned to destroy the checks. The checks contained names, addresses, account numbers -- and, yet, known criminals were handed the job of dealing with them.

Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the department, confirmed that inmates performed this work on Jan. 25.

"It is not an acceptable assignment for inmates to be shredding documents, but in fact that did occur," she said last week.

Nantel said there were two supervisors for this operation: a corrections officer and a civilian employee of the department. She declined to identify them.

The officer, she said, thought the assignment was wrongheaded, but did nothing to stop it. When word got back to the superintendent of the pre release center, she had the shredding stopped.

There is no evidence that anything illegal has been done with any of the information that was put in the inmates' laps. Still, given the high level of concern about dealing with personal information, one might think that the Department of Public Safety -- of all agencies -- might be a little more concerned with how information is handled.

Nantel said the checks had apparently been written to cover licenses issued by the department, which oversees a number of businesses, including construction, home improvement, and ticket resellers. At least one of the checks reportedly topped $100,000, though Nantel stressed that all the paper was worthless. The reason for holding them in the first place was that the state had still been pursuing the money that was owed.

Nantel said the corrections officer who allowed this operation to take place bears responsibility and is under investigation.

"We have corrections officers who accompany [prisoners] for a reason," she said. "He didn't do his job. He didn't notify his shift commander, or any of the management staff at the institution."

Nantel said officials are certain, absolutely certain, that none of the prisoners made off with anyone's private information. How can she be so sure?

"They were strip-searched before and after the assignment," she said. "They had the most thorough search available."

Perhaps DPS officials are to be lauded for trying to save taxpayers a few bucks. Still, it isn't a good feeling to know that sensitive information is being handled so carelessly. Then there's the issue that the system for deciding what pre release prisoners should and should not do isn't foolproof.

Nantel said the Department of Correction plans to make changes to prevent another occurrence. "The DOC has made the proper notification to the management team at the Department of Public Safety that it is an inappropriate use of these inmates and it isn't to happen again."

If major corporations can drop the ball on protecting identities, it is not surprising that the state can. This, however, involved two agencies and occurred in a building housing countless state agencies. Yet the people who should have been paying attention to the prisoners' activities apparently couldn't be bothered.

The episode is under investigation, but there doesn't seem to be a great deal of mystery here. The people who monitor prisoners need to know exactly where they are and what they are doing, 24-7. Obviously, that didn't happen in this case. It doesn't take a detective to figure out that the two supervisors of this team fell asleep at the wheel.

There must be plenty of constructive tasks for people nearing their release dates -- they just shouldn't involve financial records. Here's the irony, though: Of the people involved in this operation, the prisoners were the only ones who did their jobs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

nytimes.com:

February 5, 2007
Prosecutors File New Charges Against Russian Oil Tycoon
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:38 a.m. ET

MOSCOW (AP) -- Prosecutors filed new charges Monday against the jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner in an apparent move to head off any political threat from the nation's once-richest man before parliamentary and presidential elections.

Khodorkovsky, who angered President Vladimir Putin by funding opposition parties before 2003 parliamentary elections, has served nearly four years of an eight-year sentence on fraud and tax evasion charges and could be eligible for parole this year.

Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Yuri Schmidt, told The Associated Press that prosecutors in the Siberian city of Chita had indicted his client on charges of embezzling and laundering as much as $25 billion in illegal oil revenues.

Schmidt said the charges were ''not simply absurd -- they are insane. ... Whoever wrote them was either mad or drunk.''

A Web site maintained by Khodorkovsky's supporters published a statement saying that prosecutors had also filed the same charges against his business partner, Platon Lebedev. The statement said both men insisted on their innocence.

Khodorkovsky, who is serving his sentence in a Siberian prison camp, could face up to 15 years if convicted on the new charges. This would keep him in prison beyond March 2008 presidential elections, which are expected to be won by whomever Putin names as his favored successor.

''Both Mr. Khodorkovsky and Mr. Lebedev will be eligible for release from prison later this year, after having served half their current sentences,'' Khodorkovsky's international legal team said in a statement.

''Fearing their release, the Russian government has brought these new charges now to keep our clients incarcerated at least through the next presidential election in 2008 and to stop them from effectively opposing the final destruction of the Yukos Oil Co., and the expropriation of its remaining assets, later this year,'' it added.

In Russia, prison terms on separate charges are not usually served consecutively; convicts are jailed for the longest term.

The founder of the now-bankrupt oil giant OAO Yukos, Khodorkovsky was convicted in 2004 on fraud and tax evasion charges following a politically charged trial. Lebedev also is serving eight years on these charges.

Analysts say he broke an unwritten pact with the Kremlin that Russia's vastly powerful business tycoons would keep out of politics. The campaign against him also reflected the state's drive to cement control over the economy's crucial oil and gas industry, according to observers.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were moved in December to a detention center in Chita for questioning, and brought to the regional prosecutor's office on Monday for their formal indictment amid tight security.

The two men are accused of defrauding Yukos through trading schemes that allowed its owners to skim off profits and subsequently launder the illegal funds through Khodorkovsky's Open Russia foundation.

Khodorkovsky, who was one of Russia's most powerful men after building up Yukos into the country's top oil producer, was detained at gunpoint in October 2003.

Prior to his arrest and the parallel tax probe that saw most of his oil empire transferred to a state company, Khodorkovsky was estimated by Forbes magazine to have a fortune worth $15 billion.

On Sunday, police briefly detained lawyers for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev in what his legal team decried as the latest example of official harassment.

Five lawyers acting for both men were detained by police at Moscow's Domodedovo airport in the evening as they were waiting to register for a flight to Chita, Schmidt said.

While the campaign against Khodorkovsky and the carve-up of Yukos, once the country's biggest blue chip company, shook faith in the rule of law, investors have set aside their concerns and are piling into Russia's oil boom economy.

The country's main stock market, which has soared since the tycoon's conviction, recently broke the $1 trillion mark in capitalization. Foreign direct investment last year stood at $31 billion.
-----------

And there's also a story about the CEO of Hyundai under embezzlement charges. . .

I just called "Spherion" for availability check-in and arrived at EML to find Holly seeking the fax machine to send in her timesheet. . . a stew, too. . . rub it in rub it in rub it in. . .

And helped a man with the scanner. . . for, he said, it doesn't tell you what it;s going to do. . . ouch. . ..

The Lampoon fake-e-mail is intresting. . . The wikipedia entry I posted was long before the 1920 original e-mail sent, and then a follow up was sent supposedly by Gross; yet, according to the crimson both e-mails were sent from the same computer, which is quite reflective of the hUMF nad its legion across the city. . .

With SL coming in seeking is one in has my first name it is something that one that does had his blog featured in the Christian Science Monitor - he is workbedded and below me in the bunk. . . I long ago wrote of the HUMF and its actors/moles in HU's shelters. Bloggers kleeping their day jobs was last nights message. But, too, at a Holyoke Center computer he sat down a moment after I'd arrived there. . . again,. too, as with Weatherhead and with the latest Belfer Center, we have the message in toto. . .

Not spoeaking about my "personal life" (see previous entries) does in fact mean keep it quiet, teh whole thing, the use of humans in experimentation circumventing proper science practice; students running that set up by some of those that hide. . . for "This is no time for morals."

"It's run by different people," I was told, but that was spin I was to buy into. I don;t.

Just put in for two RSO jobs. In my sleep I can do these. I applied with the former HU ID number (60445095). . . doubt anything'll come from it. . . but it;s good to be proactive.

Remaining positive is difficult but it is something I can do. . . although, like with everyone, there are some hours a little more down then others. . . but I'll persevere as best I can.

I think storage is gone. . . We'll see. I'll miss the tent, and good-bye (perhaps) the Fred E. Crocketts Harvard paperwight gift (as well as other stuff).

First out of the gate today:

MIT HR:

Title: Online Managing Editor
Req Number: mit-00003819
Department: Technology Review
Location(s): Cambridge MA
FT/PT: Full Time
Employment / Payroll Category: Administrative
Work Shift:

ONLINE MANAGING EDITOR, Technology Review, to manage daily online content, including daily Web-only stories, online versions of Technology Review's print magazine stories, newsletters, video, and audio. Responsibilities include conceiving and editing Web-only stories for technologyreview.com; editing articles from staff and freelance writers and bloggers; establishing stable of reliable freelance technology and science reporters; developing business relationships with appropriate content partners; and conceiving, developing, and editing--with Technology Review's editors--online versions of its print magazine.

Technology Review and Technologyreview.com are published by Technology Review Inc., an independent media company owned by MIT.

REQUIREMENTS: an undergraduate degree in hard sciences, engineering, or social sciences; at least three years' experience as an editor working on science or technology stories at a national publication; familiarity with the conventions, methods, and styles of Web publishing, including multimedia; and excellent prose style. Seek individual who can write and edit lucid, simple, jargonless English. Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail required. Ability to meet aggressive daily deadlines expected. Must be familiar with both Macintosh and PC platforms and online and print copy management systems like Adobe QPS or InCopy. Experience with Flash a plus. MIT-00003819-R

and

Title: Software Engineer III
Req Number: mit-00003820
Department: Broad Institute
Location(s): Cambridge MA
FT/PT: Full Time
Employment / Payroll Category: SRS (Research)
Work Shift:

SOFTWARE ENGINEER III, Broad Institute, to design and develop data management, workflow, and data analysis systems to support the creation of diverse chemical libraries and the screening of those targets in novel biological assays to elucidate disease processes and discover new therapeutics. Will act as a key member of a project team using agile software engineering techniques and close user interaction to specify, deliver, and evolve informatics systems on short timeframes. Will develop and deploy new and existing systems, including system testing and response to user feedback with typical responsibility for one or several related modules; work closely with users to obtain requirements and propose the algorithms and design necessary to achieve goals; provide user support for complex modules; investigate technical options for implementation and make recommendations to senior staff and managers; document designs, issues, and other technical information for modules; plan project requirements and provide accurate estimates of work; update plans and proactively identify technical issues; and proactively improve software process and methods and assist more junior team members in improving their skills.

REQUIREMENTS: a bachelor's degree in computer science or related field and five years' development experience. Demonstrated knowledge of any combination of the following languages required: Java, Perl, or C/C++. Expert-level knowledge in at least one language expected. Knowledge of Oracle and SQL a strong plus. Prior involvement or interest in biology or genomics domain a plus. Excellent communication skills and ability to perform effectively in a fast-paced environment required. Must be able to handle a variety of tasks, effectively solve problems with numerous and complex variables, and shift priorities rapidly. MIT-00003820

------------

So they need a new software person to go through people's DNA and find diseases. . . "novel biological assays" . . . explains the push to get me to read fiction again (and it echoes the Chrichton connection, too). . .

RE not your grandmother's robot. .. in this day and age, it is of note that the surveillance aspect was played down. . . yesterday i read a NASA transcript on the software enhanced increased capabilities of Spirit and Opportunity: they do more on their own now, tasks that took 2-3 days may now take one. . . Berkeley to HU (again the California School thing - military funded). . . might this explain the bumble bee in 42 Main Street, the house flies in the Brunswick House or the always around me drosophila in salarmy (the latter puzzled me, for freshly showered and in laundered clothes, with no juice or sugary substance nearby - I'd often see one hovering about my head. . . fifteen/twenty minutes at a time. . .)? Again, prepping the public for what's already there. . .

boston.com:

Bush sends Congress $2.90T spending plan
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer | February 5, 2007

WASHINGTON --President Bush sent a $2.90 trillion spending plan to a Democratic-controlled Congress on Monday, proposing a big increase in military spending, including billions more to fight the war in Iraq, while squeezing the rest of government to meet his goal of eliminating the deficit in five years.

Bush's spending plan would make his first-term tax cuts permanent, at a cost of $1.6 trillion over 10 years. He is seeking $78 billion in savings in the government's big health care programs -- Medicare and Medicaid -- over the next five years.

Release of the budget in four massive volumes kicks off months of debate in which Democrats, now in control of both the House and Senate for the first time in Bush's presidency, made clear that they have significantly different views on spending and taxes.

"The president's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality and continues to move America in the wrong direction," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

The president insisted that he had made the right choices to keep the nation secure from terrorist threats and the economy growing.

"My formula for a balanced budget reflects the priorities of our country at this moment in its history: protecting the homeland and fighting terrorism, keeping the economy strong with low taxes and keeping spending under control while making federal programs more effective," Bush said.

Just as Iraq has come to dominate Bush's presidency, military spending was a major element in the president's new spending request. Bush was seeking a Pentagon budget of $624.6 billion for 2008, more than one-fifth of the total budget, up from $600.3 billion in 2007. For the first time, the Pentagon figures include what Bush wants to spend to fight the Iraq war, money that in past years was put in supplemental appropriations rather than the regular budget.

Bush projected a deficit in the current year of $244 billion, just slightly lower than last year's $248 billion imbalance. For 2008, the budget year that begins next Oct. 1, Bush sees another slight decline in the deficit to $239 billion with further steady improvement over the next three years until the budget records a surplus of $61 billion in 2012, three years after Bush has left office.

Democrats, however, challenged those projections, contending that Bush only achieves a surplus by leaving out the billions of dollars Congress is expected to spend to keep the alternative minimum tax from ensnaring millions of middle-class taxpayers. His budget includes an AMT fix only for 2008.

Bush projects government spending in 2008 of $2.90 trillion, a 4.9 percent increase from the $2.78 trillion in outlays the administration is projecting for this year. However, the administration notes that the 2007 total is only an estimate, given that Congress is still working to complete a massive omnibus spending bill to cover most agencies for the rest of this fiscal year.

To help achieve what would be the government's first surplus since 2001, Bush is proposing $95.9 billion in savings in mandatory spending, the part of the budget that includes the big benefit programs of Social Security and health care.

Medicare, which provides health insurance for 43 million older and disabled Americans, would see the bulk of those savings -- reductions of $66 billion over five years. That would come about primarily by slowing the growth of payments to health care providers.

Additional savings would be achieved by charging higher income Medicare beneficiaries bigger monthly premiums.

While Bush said something had to be done to get control of spiraling health care costs, Congress refused to go along last year with Bush's effort for smaller reductions in Medicare.

Bush would seek to eliminate or sharply reduce 141 government programs for a five-year savings of $12 billion. But many of those reductions he has proposed in past budgets -- only to see them rejected by Congress.

Bush once listed overhauling Social Security as the No. 1 domestic priority of his second term. But his effort two years ago to accomplish this goal by diverting some Social Security taxes into private investment accounts went nowhere in Congress. He included the private accounts again in this year's budget. But to minimize the impact, he only showed the program taking effect in 2012, when the private accounts would cost $29.3 billion.

The president's budget also includes an initiative to expand health care coverage to the uninsured through a complex proposal that would give every family a $15,000 tax deduction for purchasing health coverage but would make current employee-supplied health coverage taxable for certain taxpayers.

Bush is also proposing to increase the maximum Pell grant, which goes to low-income students, from the current $4,050 to $4,600. Democrats are pushing for even larger increases.

Bush's energy proposals would expand use of ethanol and other renewable fuels with a goal of cutting gasoline use by 20 percent over the next decade.
------------------------

So we see what the priority is. . .

* * *

1113 --

whenever I hear a fire siren start up or teravelling in the distance, I always mutter under my breath: "Godspeed Lads and Lasses" for anyone who would rush into a burning building to save me or any unknown stranger is one worthy of the well wish (police, too). . . so it was a bummer to find the following article online:

from msnbc.com:

Flaws found in firefighters' last line of defense
U.S. waited 5 years to heed expert's warning on ‘man down’ alarms
FIRST OF TWO PARTS
By Bill Dedman
Investigative reporter
An MSNBC Special Report
Updated: 8:24 a.m. ET Feb 5, 2007
Worn by a million firefighters in the U.S., the PASS device is a motion sensor that makes an awful racket if a firefighter stops moving for 30 seconds while battling a blaze. It flashes its lights and lets loose a series of ear-splitting beeps — an urgent call to help a fallen comrade.

It’s a call that hasn't always been heard. Tests by federal and independent labs show that some PASS alarms can fail to perform as intended if they get too hot or wet — a serious problem for people who rush into burning buildings with water hoses. And federal investigative reports reviewed by MSNBC.com show that 15 firefighters have died since 1998 in fires where a PASS, or Personal Alert Safety System, either didn't sound or was so quiet that rescuers weren't given a chance to find the firefighter quickly.

Documents made public under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that nine of those deaths came after the federal government blocked an investigation by its own expert into possible failures of PASS alarms and other firefighting equipment. A manager for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that is charged by Congress with investigating firefighter deaths, ordered an agency fire safety engineer on Feb. 14, 2000, to "minimize your fact gathering during investigations" and to restrict his investigations to issues relevant "for the prevention of future similar events."

On that same day, before dawn, Houston firefighter Kim Smith had become lost in a fire in a McDonald's restaurant.

Hearing no beeps from her PASS alarm, and seeing no flashing lights, her comrades searched for two hours before finding her body.

‘If a firefighter dies, it's a good funeral’
Nine more times, the rituals of a firefighter's funeral — a fire truck bearing the flag-draped casket; the bagpipers playing “Will Ye No Come Back Again?” — were re-enacted before the CDC took action, calling finally in April 2005 for higher standards for testing PASS alarms.

“Fire departments give good funerals," said Richard M. Duffy, the health and safety chief for the International Association of Fire Fighters.

"We never did investigations to the extent that they were needed … but we did some very, very good funerals. If a cop dies, it's a crime scene. If a firefighter dies, it's a good funeral."

After the CDC’s warning, tests quickly demonstrated that temperatures commonly encountered by firefighters could hurt the performance of at least some PASS alarms. Tests in a convection oven at the National Institute of Standards and Technology found a problem with the two models it tested: The volume of the beeping diminished substantially at temperatures as low as 300 degrees Fahrenheit — the sort of temperatures that firefighters encounter in a room next to a fire. Researchers said they believe that all of the half-dozen or so brands of PASS alarms on the market would be similarly affected.

In addition, some PASS devices made by at least three manufacturers have had problems over the past decade with water leaking into the electronics or battery compartments, causing them to either beep continually or stop working altogether, according to interviews and documents reviewed by MSNBC.com.

Later this week, a tougher new standard for testing PASS devices in heat and water will be issued by the National Fire Protection Association. But manufacturers say it will be months before an improved device is on the market. And even when new models are available, there is no plan for recalling the old ones, so fire departments may have to bear the cost of replacing them.

Meanwhile, the approximately 1 million professional and volunteer firefighters across the nation will rely on the older PASS alarms as their last line of defense.

Precise role in fatalities is unclear
No one can say for sure that a PASS device caused any of the 15 deaths in which the alarms weren’t heard. And it's impossible to say that any firefighter would necessarily have survived if the PASS alarm had been seen and heard.

Firefighting is dangerous even when done right. But firefighter fatalities usually involve a series of mistakes: inadequate staffing or training; firefighters working alone instead of in pairs; an incident commander's mistake in evaluating the risk. The PASS device is intended to give firefighters who are injured, trapped or just lost in the smoke a chance to survive such miscues.

It is required to shriek for an hour at 95 decibels so it can be heard over the roar of the fire and the cacophony of chain saws cutting, exhaust fans blowing, glass breaking and water flowing.

"It sends a chill up your spine," Kenneth R. Willette, the fire chief in Concord, Mass., said of the alarm’s piercing cry. "You know that means someone is in trouble. So until you can locate that person, your heart is racing and all you can think about is finding that person."

The first generation of PASS alarms, which were introduced in the early 1980s, had a human problem: Annoyed when the device started beeping when they stood still on a break, many firefighters would just not turn them on.

So the National Fire Protection Association set a standard requiring that the device be armed automatically when a firefighter turns on the air supply. These so-called "integrated PASS devices" are built into the self-contained breathing apparatus. When the firefighter is motionless — usually for 30 seconds — they first sound a gentle beep, the pre-alarm signal, then ramp up to the full alarm. That's why, at a fire, bystanders will often see firefighters waggling their hips. They're not dancing. They're telling the PASS, "I'm still alive."

In exchange for that annoyance, firefighters rely on the devices to work when they need them. And they usually do. Manufacturers say that hundreds of firefighters have been saved by PASS devices.

Devices silent, or just too quiet
The stories of the 15 who were not saved are contained in reports by the CDC's Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program. Each firefighter was wearing an automatic PASS alarm. In 12 of the 15 cases, nothing was heard; in three cases, the sound was muffled by the firefighter lying on the device and could be heard only when rescuers found the victim and rolled him over, according to the CDC's reports.

In November 2000 in Pensacola, Fla., firefighter Maurice Bartholomew got lost trying to leave a house fire. Firefighters searched for an hour before finding him in a kitchen at the back of the house. His PASS alarm wasn't heard or seen at all.

In March 2002 in Jefferson City, Tenn., volunteer firefighter Shane Murray was trapped in a house fire. He was found after 18 minutes just 5 feet from the door. His PASS device was beeping, but not loud enough to be heard while he was lying on it.

And in May 2002 in St. Louis, firefighter Rob Morrison's PASS alarm was not heard or seen for 20 minutes while he was injured inside a refrigeration company fire. Firefighter Derek Martin went looking for Morrison at the wrong end of the building and got lost. Both men died.


"I just can't believe that this was happening a number of times and no one was told about it," said Morrison’s widow, Laura. "I mean, Rob didn't know. None of the firemen knew."

Eric R. Schmidt didn't know for sure that PASS devices were malfunctioning, but he suspected that there was a recurring problem with the alarms.


Engineer's warning ignored
Schmidt went to work for the CDC in 1999 as the first fire protection engineer in the firefighter fatality program in Morgantown, W.Va. In 1998, Congress gave the CDC the responsibility for investigating firefighter deaths and searching for lessons that could prevent additional fatalities. The CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, was given responsibility for the program.

Documents provided by the CDC show that Schmidt was investigating a December 1999 fire in Keokuk, Iowa, where three firefighters died along with the three children they had been trying to save. The firefighters had been wearing two PASS devices apiece — one that is armed only if a firefighter turns it on, and the integrated alarm that is switched on automatically. Schmidt thought it was strange that none of the dozen other firefighters on the scene recalled hearing the alarms, so he wanted to collect the tape recordings from the dispatch center to see if the sounds could be heard there.

“I’m saying, the math here is astonishing," Schmidt told MSNBC.com, describing his conversation with his supervisors at the CDC. "The chance of having a dozen deaf firefighters is astronomical."

Schmidt also knew that in New York City in 1998, no one had heard the PASS alarms of two firefighters who died in a high-rise apartment fire. A third firefighter died in the same fire, but his PASS sounded. That information was in the CDC unit's investigative report on that fire, issued in August 1999.

"I can’t tell you I understood what the failure pattern was,” Schmidt said. “All I could tell you is, something is not adding up. This needs more attention. Let’s go back and listen to the tapes. They said, ‘We don’t want to listen to the tapes.’”

On that Valentine's Day morning in 2000, the head of the firefighter program, Dawn Castillo, gave Schmidt a memo labeled "performance guidelines."

First, she reminded Schmidt that he was still on probation as a new employee, and would need to improve his performance to keep his job.

Then she urged him to stop wasting his time asking for evidence such as dispatch tapes.

She criticized his "persistence in gathering complete autopsy reports"; just getting the cause of death by phone was sufficient, she said.

And she told Schmidt he didn't need to gather details such as the measurements of a fire hose that had burned through, or information on firefighters' protective jackets, which he thought had been recalled by the manufacturer.

‘Minimize your fact gathering’
Castillo offered four reasons for Schmidt to scale back his investigations:

"The collection of detailed information not of likely use in an investigation is an inefficient use of your time."
It's "a burden on those who help us in gathering the facts of the case."
It's "a potential liability to the program if those who spend their time helping us to understand the case are upset by the absence of information that they helped provide in the summary report."
Any information that is gathered could be requested from the CDC by others. The agency does not identify individuals in its reports.
"You need to minimize your fact gathering during investigations," Castillo wrote, "to those pieces of information which are needed to summarize the chain of events or that have direct implications for prevention recommendations."

The memo was hand-delivered just as fire departments around the country were lowering their flags to half staff.

Earlier that morning, in southwest Houston, 30-year-old Kim Smith had been about to end her 24-hour shift. She planned to spend the rest of Valentine's Day with her fiancé.

But at 4:33, a fire alarm awakened the crew in Fire Station 76: There was a fire at a McDonald's.

She was one of the first firefighters to rush into the restaurant. Attached to her air supply was a PASS device made by Scott Health & Safety, the U.S. market leader in self-contained breathing apparatus.

She and firefighter Lewis Mayo, 44, took a hose line into the kitchen for a "fast attack" on the fire. She'd done this many times, and had won regional competitions for her firefighting skills and endurance.

Inside the McDonald's, the heat became intense and 30-foot flames were shooting out of the roof. At 4:52 a.m., the chief ordered everyone to evacuate, but Smith and Mayo didn't emerge from the inferno. They had been buried by a ceiling collapse.

A PASS device was heard. It was Mayo's, and he was found alive, though he later died at the hospital.

But Smith's PASS was never heard, the CDC found. It took two hours to find her body in the debris, just 6 feet from the door. Police discovered later that burglars had set the fire.

Fired for ‘marginal’ performance
Four months after the double-fatality fire in Houston, Schmidt was fired by Castillo in June 2000 for "marginal" performance. Castillo wrote in his termination letter that he was not a good team player, was inefficient, and spent time gathering information "of questionable utility and necessity." She cited especially the delay waiting for the dispatch tapes in the Iowa fire. The program didn't replace him, and hasn't had a fire engineer since, she told MSNBC.com.

But Schmidt didn't drop the equipment issues. He wasn’t just an engineer, but also a former fire captain in Prince George's County, Md., with 20 years of experience in the fire service. On Oct. 2, 2000, he wrote to Dr. Linda Rosenstock, the director of the CDC's NIOSH agency.

Schmidt asked Rosenstock to look into the issues of firefighter equipment so more firefighters wouldn't die. He highlighted three instances where he was told not to investigate: the fire hose that failed; the firefighter coats that may have been recalled; and the PASS devices, which he called "another issue that warrants further investigation."

"This is but only one example," he wrote of Castillo's performance guidelines, "where the managers of this program in Morgantown repeatedly instruct staff to omit critical facts because of ‘potential liability to the program.’ These managers have shown little, if any regard, for the fact that fire fighters will continue to actually suffer injuries and death in part because NIOSH fails to document critical aspects of these incidents."

Rosenstock is no longer at the CDC. She was in her last month in government when Schmidt's letter arrived. Now the dean of the UCLA School of Public Health, she declined to be interviewed by MSNBC.com, but sent word through a spokeswoman that she doesn't remember Schmidt’s letter.


Castillo told MSNBC.com that the CDC took no action in response to the letter, because Schmidt didn't provide any new information beyond what they had already discussed.

"Although PASS devices were one issue that he addressed in his letter, in passing, that letter did not provide any additional documentation to substantiate his concerns," Castillo said.

She said no additional documentation was requested.

"No, no one acted upon it," she said, "because there was nothing substantive to act upon."

Manager: No valid areas of inquiry blocked
Castillo said she had not blocked any valid areas of inquiry, but didn't want Schmidt to get sidetracked by nonessential issues. To be able to investigate deaths with limited funds, she said, investigators had to limit themselves to the factors that led to deaths, not to follow trails on other safety issues of uncertain value.

In the Iowa fire, she said, the firefighters wouldn't have survived the extreme heat of a flashover, or sudden ignition of a room — even if their fire hose had held, or their coats had not been recalled, or the PASS alarms had been heard.

"Did we follow up and do additional testing? We did not," Castillo said. "Do we have the resources to go down every single path? We do not. Do we generally tell people not to follow up on promising leads? Absolutely not."

Citing a computer simulation of the Iowa fire, Castillo said the temperatures reached 1,100 degrees F, which she said was not survivable and in which no PASS device could be expected to operate. The national standard for PASS devices, however, has since 1998 included a flashover simulation: 1,500 to 2,100 degrees for 10 seconds.

After Schmidt was fired, the CDC released its investigative report on the Iowa fire in April 2001. One of its recommendations is curious: Instead of recommending that PASS alarms be tested, it stated that firefighters should use PASS alarms. But as another section of the report makes clear, all three firefighters were wearing their automatic alarms, and they were not heard.

Schmidt said he thinks one cause of his disagreements with Castillo was a difference in perspective. He is an engineer and a firefighter. She's an epidemiologist and specialist in child labor, who won her agency's top award in 2004. He said she just didn't respect the value of personal protective equipment, because child workers aren't allowed in jobs where such gear is used. But firefighters can't control their work environment -- they go where they're called. That's why they rely on helmets, hoods, gloves, boots, bunker pants, coats and face masks.

"She would say, 'The room flashed over. How could anybody have survived?'” he said. “I said, 'Well, firefighters have survived flashover. You're going to be in the burn ward for a period of time, but firefighters have survived flashover.'"


Other opportunities missed
As the years passed, the CDC missed other chances to look into PASS alarms.

In May 2001 in Passaic, N.J., firefighter Alberto Tirado was hunting for children in a fire. Rescuers entered the building three times trying to find him, and only when they turned him over could they hear a faint PASS alarm.

Back at the CDC lab, Tirado’s PASS device wouldn't sound its alarm, but the technician who ran the test didn’t pursue the matter, because the agency does not certify the alarms.

Nor did he send it to the Safety Equipment Institute, which does certify that the devices meet the standards set by the fire prevention association.

"The PASS device did not function," the technician wrote in the final report. "I made no attempt to determine why the device failed to activate. Because NIOSH does not test or certify PASS devices, no further testing or evaluations were conducted on the PASS unit."

One reason the CDC didn't focus on PASS alarms, Castillo told MSNBC.com, is that its mission is to focus on the factors that get firefighters into trouble — more than the factors that might help get them out of trouble. She called the PASS devices "tertiary," or of third rank or importance.

"When we are doing our investigation, we are focusing on those things that we feel — that we find, through our investigation process, have the greatest role in resulting in that firefighter's death," Castillo said. "The PASS device is a last resort."

Schmidt argues that it’s impossible to determine what's important without investigating. In agreeing to discuss his personnel file, he said, he doesn't want all the focus to be on PASS devices.

"My point for doing all this is, I want to make sure there’s a process in place to identify sentinel events, so investigators don’t have to fight tooth and nail to identify something, which may be a hunch.

"In 2000, when I wrote my letter, it was something that was odd, that I was trying to tell them. They said, ‘Don’t worry about that.’

"If you’re doing a scientific investigation," Schmidt said, "you have to write down these hunches, because if you get them two or three times, you’ve got a problem. ... Within 90 days of documenting a sentinel event, put something out to the fire service."

2003 death triggers a warning
It wasn’t until after a 2003 death, Castillo said, that the CDC concluded that PASS devices had a problem.

Even then the CDC took more than a year to issue a warning to the fire prevention association.


In the Inwood section of New York City on Dec. 16, 2003, firefighter Thomas Brick was lost in a fire in a mattress warehouse. It took 30 minutes to find him. When he was turned over, his PASS alarm emitted a very low sound of the sort associated with an electrical short.

Brick had been in the first class of recruits after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Brick's death, Castillo told MSNBC.com, "was the first in which our investigators had direct evidence that typical exposure to heat at the scene of a fire might adversely affect a PASS device."

Although the CDC team made its visit to the fire scene on Jan. 26, 2004 — 41 days after Brick's death — the agency waited another 450 days — until April 20, 2005 — to ask the National Fire Protection Association to consider toughening the tests for PASS alarms.

In that period, two more firefighters died in fires where rescuers couldn't find them:

Firefighter Steve Fierro died in Carthage, Mo., on Feb. 18, 2004. Unaware that Fierro was near the front of the building, the rescue team was searching at the rear. It took about 43 minutes to find him.

Firefighter Nito Guajardo died in Baytown, Texas, on Dec. 20, 2004. He was found after a 15-minute search, about 15 feet from the door.

"It was gut wrenching," said Schmidt, the former CDC engineer. "I mean it was very difficult to hear that additional firefighters were dying."

To try to figure out what was going wrong, the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., put two models of PASS alarms into its oven.

When heated first to room temperature, about 73 degrees F, both PASS devices beeped at about 86 decibels, roughly as loud as a Mack truck driving past at a distance of just 3 feet.

But when heated to 392 degrees, the PASS devices sounded at only 72 decibels, only as loud as a busy restaurant. (The decibel scale is logarithmic, so a drop of 14 decibels represents a substantial decrease in volume.)

"One of the tricky things is, the volume decreases, but when it cools down, it comes back," said Nelson Bryner, leader of the firefighting technology group that oversaw the tests.

"If a firefighter goes down, the noise generator may not have worked. But once the fire is out, now it's working. One is led to believe that the PASS worked the whole time."

The scientists won't reveal which companies made the two PASS devices that were tested, but in fire protection association committee meetings, manufacturers agreed that all the PASS devices now on the market use essentially the same technology to sense motion and sound the alarm.

But heat is only part of the problem.

The hair dryer treatment

Under the national standard since 1998, PASS devices must be able to withstand immersion in water for two hours, and even work after a dunk for 5 minutes with the battery compartment left open.

Since 2000, however, Dallas firefighters have been using hair dryers to dry out the battery and electronics compartments of their PASS devices, according to the department's safety officer. The water causes the devices to beep constantly, and firefighters fear that it might cause them not to sound at all when needed, a Dallas fire chief said.

"I'm embarrassed to say that's how we were addressing the problem, but the hair dryers worked," said the safety officer for Dallas Fire-Rescue, Battalion Chief Ray Reed.

He said the city is pressing the issue with the manufacturer, Scott Health & Safety, which is a division of Tyco International Ltd.

If he didn't serve on a national committee for the fire protection association, Reed said, he wouldn't have known that other departments were having similar issues.

A spokeswoman for Scott said the company is working closely with Dallas to resolve the problem, but wouldn't give any details.

A second manufacturer, Mine Safety Appliances, sent out a user advisory in November 2001 describing a problem that caused about 2 percent of its PASS devices to beep continuously. Some of those incidents were caused by water, the company said. The advisory attributed the problem to screws that have become loosened over time, and said it could be fixed by using different screws and adding waterproof glue.

Company remained mum on water leaks
No such alert was sent out by a third manufacturer, Survivair Respirators, although executives have testified that from 5 percent to 20 percent of its PASS alarms suffered from water leaks.


That information emerged in response to a lawsuit filed by the families of St. Louis firefighters Rob Morrison and Derek Martin, who died in the refrigeration company fire in 2002.

Morrison’s PASS alarm was not heard, and he was found only when a searcher stepped on him.

Martin's PASS alarm did work, but he became lost while searching for Morrison. Both firefighters were alive when they were found, but died within a day.

In the two-week trial of the Morrison family’s lawsuit in September, attorneys for Survivair disputed the claim that his PASS failed. The company argued that there were three innocent possibilities: Morrison had been moving the entire time he was lost, or for some reason he might have reset his PASS — in effect turning off the alarm — or it could have sounded but not been heard.

None of the firefighters hunting for Morrison testified that they heard his PASS alarm during the 20 minutes he was lost.

Executives of Survivair of Santa Ana, Calif., a company founded by Jacques Cousteau that is a division of the French company Bacou-Dalloz, testified that the problem of "leakers" was identified in 1997 or 1998, before its PASS device moved from preproduction to its first sale. Changes to address the problem continued at least until 2003, or a year after the St. Louis fire.

Complaints poured in from dozens of fire departments, the executives testified. About 300 out of 1,500 PASS devices sold to the Los Angeles Fire Department were returned to the company, determined to be leaking and replaced, testified James Beckstead, the company’s Western regional sales manager.

There was conflicting testimony from Survivair on the effect of the water leaks. Senior executives said that the device was designed with a fail-safe feature that would cause it to sound constantly if water got inside, making firefighters aware of the malfunction. But two company engineers testified that sometimes the devices wouldn’t sound an alarm at all if water got into the electronics.


"We don't deem it a safety issue"

"No sound, no lights ... nothing," testified Duane Decker, the former Survivair mechanical engineer in charge of fixing the leaks. "It was determined that if water got in, sometimes they would not work."

Decker described making a series of changes: the cover was redesigned, to reduce the number of places where water could enter; a sealant was added to the cover gasket during assembly; then designers tried only the sealant with no gasket; as well as extending the coating on the circuit board to provide more protection. The company also began dunking every PASS device in water, not just a sample of them as before. But it did not call back the ones in the field for a dunking.

The St. Louis Fire Department, which bought its Survivair PASS devices in 1999, received no warning of the problem.

From the testimony of James Beckstead, the Western regional sales manager:

Q. You've said there was no recall. You've also said that there was no calling the PASS devices in for testing that were out there in the field. Was there any kind of a warning sent, a warning letter or call made, to fire departments that had the devices that were not water tested — about, "Hey," along the lines, "we've found a leakage problem, and be on the lookout," or anything like that?

A. Not that I recall.

Q. Any particular reason why not?

A. The only reason we would not do that is we don't deem it a safety issue.

Q. This is a life-saving device, isn't it?

A. It's a component of a life-saving device.

Executive: ‘The word was out there’
Survivair's senior executive, Jack Bell, testified there was no need for a warning, because firefighters knew about the water problem: "The word was out there, whether we formally told everyone — rumors or some way."

The lawyers disagreed on whether the CDC tested Morrison's PASS device, and what that test showed. The company said that the CDC tested Morrison's PASS device more than 100 times, and it worked perfectly. The CDC report on Morrison’s and Martin's death says that both PASS devices worked in a simple test, but that they were not subjected to more rigorous tests to determine if they met the national standard — again, because the CDC does not certify that equipment. Even in the simple test, the lawyer for the Morrison family argued, the video shows 3 minutes when the device failed to alarm.

And when an independent lab dunked Morrison's PASS device in water during testing to determine if it met the national standard, and then opened it in front of lawyers and a video camera, water spilled out of the electronics compartment.

"There isn't strong enough language to condemn how they handled this," the lawyer for the Morrison family, Daniel Finney Jr., of St. Louis, told MSNBC.com. "They were selling their products as lifesaving devices when they knew they were fatally flawed. They were selling them as a firefighter's lifeline, and they knew they could very well fail him in that situation, and they didn't tell anyone. It would be like selling parachutes when you know that they don't open one out of five times, and not telling anyone."

The company's vice president and general manager, Jack Bell, sent a statement to MSNBC.com in response to Finney's statement: "Survivair completely and unequivocally denies his false, factually unsupported and reckless charges. The evidence supporting Survivair’s position in this litigation is compelling. … Survivair’s equipment was not at fault."

A secret 11th-hour settlement
The jury never reached a conclusion. It was deliberating when Survivair and the Morrison family agreed to a settlement. The company admitted no fault and did not agree to make any changes or send out a warning, but it did pay an undisclosed amount to the Morrison family. A separate lawsuit by Derek Martin's family is headed to trial in April.

Meanwhile, St. Louis firefighters are still wearing the same model PASS device that Morrison wore.

Armed with the oven tests, and with testimony from the widows of Martin and Morrison, the National Fire Protection Association approved a tougher standard for PASS alarms in December. The standard, which is scheduled to be published on the association’s Web site on Friday, requires a series of tests showing the PASS alarm can withstand being heated, dunked in water, and tumbled in a dryer, according to a summary provided by the association.

The maximum temperatures the devices are required to withstand in the new test are no higher than in the old test: 500 degrees Fahrenheit for five minutes, then 1,500 to 2,100 degrees for 10 seconds in the flashover test. But it does require that the PASS device produce a sound after some of the torture tests; the old standard just required it not to melt or catch on fire.

The new standard also adds a "muffle test." The alarm will have to be more powerful so it can be heard of a firefighter falls on it.

Some manufacturers told the association that the new heat standard can't be met.

But the largest manufacturer of PASS alarms, Scott, says it will have a device to meet the new standard by this summer, when old inventory can no longer be sold.

Who will pay for replacements?
As for the more than one million U.S. firefighters with the old devices, their fire departments may have to pay for new ones, which cost about $200 apiece. It's not clear that any agency has authority to order a recall of the old ones:

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says it doesn't have a role, because a firefighter's equipment isn't considered a consumer product.
The National Fire Protection Association says that its standards are voluntary, that responsibility to enforce those standards rests with the Safety Equipment Institute, or SEI, another nonprofit, which certifies devices as meeting the standard.
And SEI says that only the manufacturers can decide whether or not to recall the old devices.

"From what I understand, the manufacturer is the only one who can pull the trigger on a recall," said Stephen R. Sanders, the institute’s technical director. "We can influence whether or not a manufacturer does a recall. But they might look at us and say, ‘You're crazy.’"

The institute raised concerns several times about Survivair PASS alarms failing its random tests, but accepted the company's assurances that it was an isolated problem, or had been fixed, documents introduced in the Morrison trial show.

For Rob Morrison's widow, who comes from a firefighting family in St. Louis, the lack of accountability is baffling.

"I just couldn't figure that out," Laura Morrison said, "when firemen are giving their lives everyday to help the community and save people — and companies knew about this and never told anybody what the problem was, and let them, still today, go into a burning building not knowing if their PASS device is going to work or not."
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as always: http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/calendar
It is best to read this journal from the beginning. . .
http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2006/02/08/
it makes more sense then. ....
or just explore the journal at: http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com
may i recommend: http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/01/04/
and a follow up to that: http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/2008/10/12/
and I do not know him and he does not know me - but it seems through Harvard our existences are intertwined; therefore, noting this is not an endorsement either way, but in the need to ask the readership of this journal to remain vigilent (as the bush leage asked of america but not for it's bad influence on america), I ask readers to keep abreast of www.whitehouse.gov and to help make sure Obama and his harvard teams stays the course they claim to be on. . . for HUMFErs are in his ears as they are in mine - see previous entries. . .
http://theurbanhermit.livejournal.com/calendar

help one another if you can. . .
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