The new NFPA Journal explores how big oil can create big challenges for small fire departments

As the United States rapidly increases oil drilling and the use of new extraction methods such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, hundreds of new industrial oil wells have appeared all across the rural landscape. The situation has created a serious problem for the small, often volunteer, fire departments charged with protecting these remote areas. “Regular firefighting and industrial firefighting are two different things, and they have really never intermingled—but now we’re forced to make that happen,” Neal Nanna, chief of the Harmony Volunteer Department in western Pennsylvania, says in the new March/April issue of NFPA Journal. “You can’t just run...