Chief Heather Marques, M.A. is a Division Chief of Medical Services for an all-risk fire department in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. Her agency’s district covers over 500 square miles and provides fire suppression, ALS emergency medical services, fire prevention, and public education. ACFD ran approximately 46,000 calls for service in 2022. Heather is trained as a Nationally Registered Paramedic, a hazmat specialist, a confined space rescue technician, water rescue specialist and teaches at the fire academy. She also teaches paramedic-level courses and is a certified instructor and lead skills evaluator for the California State Fire Marshal. She serves as Chair of the California State Fire Association (CSFA) Strategic Planning Committee. Heather holds an associate degree in photography, an associate degree in paramedicine, and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. Heather has attended the Los Angeles Fire Department Leadership Academy. She recently graduated from the master’s program in Security Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Her thesis is about the challenges faced by female firefighters. Her thesis is titled Working Fire: Recruitment and Retention of Women Firefighters. Heather is committed to First Responder Health and Wellness and is developing a statewide training module to address human trafficking education for the California fire service.

An early traumatic experience in the fire service forged a great desire and passion for setting and continually enforcing high-quality performance and expectations. Her main goal is to help firefighters understand the necessity and the demand for preparation, competence, and performance for the most complex incidents at every battle level.

Instructor: Lauran McCulloh is a Battalion Chief for the City of Salisbury, North Carolina. Since beginning her career in 2007 at the age of 18, she has paved her way, rising through the ranks of Recruit, Firefighter, Engineer, Lieutenant, and Captain. With an associate's degree in Emergency Medical Science and a bachelor's degree in Fire and Emergency Service Administration, Chief McCulloh intends to continue her career advancement while impacting others with her knowledge and commitment to the service.

The Exponential Engine presents a comprehensive yet simple approach to planning for the first-arriving engine fire attack when faced with exponential fire growth, limited staffing, or rapidly changing fire conditions. All departments should evaluate their fire stream systems from the source to the nozzle. The foundation of this concept consists of our three most common tools: the 1.75′-inch attack line, the 2.50′-inch attack line, and the deck gun.

Instructor: Valerie Marshall Solano is an 18-year fire service veteran serving in volunteer, combination, and career fire departments and currently holds the position of Lieutenant for the Aurora Fire Rescue (CO). She has held an assignment to the training staff twice as a firefighter and a Lieutenant for the Recruit Academy. She helped develop and deploy Camp Spark, a fire camp, to build interest, mentor, and teach young women about leadership in their community and the fire service as a career. Valerie enjoys traveling and teaching engine company operations with an emphasis on the proper selection, deployment, and movement of 2.5 hand lines believing that hands-on training is paramount in the success of any firefighter to gain confidence in any skill set. Valerie believes her success has directly resulted from those who have invested their time and energy into her, and she wishes to pay those lessons and investments forward.

Exponential Engine presents a comprehensive yet simple approach to planning for the first-arriving engine fire attack when faced with exponential fire growth, limited staffing, or rapidly changing fire conditions. All departments should evaluate their fire stream systems from the source to the nozzle. The foundation of this concept consists of our three most common tools: the 1.75′-inch attack line, the 2.50′-inch attack line, and the deck gun.

Instructor: Tammy Cifra is a Captain for the City of Glendale Fire Department in Arizona. She started the job in 2004 with her dream department and hasn’t looked back. She is a nationally registered paramedic, hazardous material technician, and technical rescue technician. She is a certified Fire Instructor I & II in the State of Arizona. She has taught Zero Impact Period at Arizona State Fire School for three years. She is part of a local cadre of members of different fire departments from across the valley that focus on techniques and skills for proper line selection, hose deployment, forcible entry, and water application. She served as a Recruit Training Officer at the academy for three classes and is currently the Lead Recruit Training Officer for the Glendale Regional Public Safety Training Center.

Seconds Count: Analysis of Search and Rescue Tactics in Single-Story Single-Family Homes.

For a single-story, single-family home, what is the impact of isolation and ventilation as they relate to firefighter safety and occupant tenability during a search, what is the impact of search and rescue operations relative to suppression timing on firefighter safety and occupant tenability, and how does removal pathway, removal elevation, and removal speed impact occupant tenability. To answer these questions, UL FSRI conducted over 20 full-scale fire experiments in conjunction with a fire service technical panel. This talk will present the key takeaways or tactical considerations -- using both experimental data and experimental footage from the project.

Instructor: Bekah received her B.S. and M.S. in fire protection engineering from the University of Maryland. During her time as an undergraduate student, she was an intern at UL's Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI) and worked on a large range of projects, including large-scale fire testing and wildland-urban interface (WUI) fire research. She was also a Research Fellow at FSRI while completing her M.S. degree. Her graduate work focused on WUI fire research, as she studied heat transfer through various window types exposed to external heat flux. Bekah's current work focuses on understanding the impact of firefighter tactics within structures and studying the mechanisms of structure-to-structure fire spread.

Seconds Count: Analysis of Search and Rescue Tactics in Single-Story Single-Family Homes.

For a single-story, single-family home, what is the impact of isolation and ventilation as they relate to firefighter safety and occupant tenability during a search, what is the impact of search and rescue operations relative to suppression timing on firefighter safety and occupant tenability, and how does removal pathway, removal elevation, and removal speed impact occupant tenability. To answer these questions, UL FSRI conducted over 20 full-scale fire experiments in conjunction with a fire service technical panel. This talk will present the key takeaways or tactical considerations -- using both experimental data and experimental footage from the project.

Instructor: Craig holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas-Austin. During his graduate studies, Craig conducted experiments and developed computational models to characterize the impact of forced ventilation on room-scale compartment fires. Prior to joining UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI)

Craig worked at NIST as part of the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) development team. He has since used FDS to study the fire dynamics and thermal environment of fires that resulted in line-of-duty deaths and injuries to firefighters.

Since joining FSRI, Craig has been conducting research in the fields of firefighter safety, fire forensics, fire science, and data analytics. Currently, his focus is on characterizing the impact of firefighter tactics on the thermal and toxic environment within structures. Other research interests include community-scale fire-risk modeling, verification, and validation of fire models, the impact of ventilation on fire damage, and material property data. Craig is currently the principal investigator for the development of NERIS.