Fire Science Show
Fire Science Show
198 - Waste and recycling fires and how to fight them with Ryan Fogelman
The devastating impact of waste and recycling industry fires costs approximately $2.5 billion annually in the US and Canada alone, with lithium-ion batteries causing roughly 50% of these incidents. In this episode with Ryan Fogelman from Fire Rover, we discuss:
• Understanding the scale of waste facility fires and why traditional fire protection methods often fail in these environments
• How lithium-ion batteries have created a "hockey stick" rise in fire incidents since 2015
• The "vape effect" - how 1.2 billion single-use vapes with no proper disposal options are contributing to the fire crisis
• Why remote monitoring and response systems can detect and fight fires faster than traditional sprinkler systems
• The importance of early intervention - FireRover's systems respond in seconds rather than minutes, and targeted suppression uses 88% less water than traditional methods while providing more effective control, reducing the contaminated water spill
• Why waste and recycling operators are victims of consumer disposal habits and regulatory gaps
• The need for more convenient battery drop-off locations to prevent improper disposal
• How innovative fire solutions are changing the approach from "water, water, water" to targeted remote response
Visit firerover.com to learn more about remote fire suppression solutions for waste facilities or contact Ryan Fogelman on lnkd for a free PDF copy of the latest "Waste & Recycling Facility Fire Annual Report"
Thank you to the SFPE for recognizing me with the 2025 SFPE Fire Safety Engineering Award! Huge thanks to YOU for being a part of this, and big thanks to the OFR for supporting me over the years.
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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.
Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show. Waste and recycling industry fires. I thought that's a niche topic to be talking about, but today I've learned that the annual cost of those fires in US and Canada alone is something around $ 2. 5 billion. That's definitely not a niche and definitely a space which deserves more than one Fire Science Show episode, which deserves more than one Firescience Show episode. Some time ago I had an episode with Ragni and we've talked about how to build storage facilities to reduce the threat or hazards coming from waste fires. And today I have another guest, ryan Fogelman from FireOver, whose experience is more hands-down on the fires themselves, not directly but more in a remote way. So the company Ryan works at FireOver offers remote water monitors. Those are like those large water cannons that are put high above the waste facility that can shoot water to any part of the waste yacht or the facility and control the fire until the big red trucks come.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:So I would not invite Ryan if it was just the product. Besides offering a solution for those waste fires, ryan also works in like building the knowledge about those types of hazards and fires. He's releasing something he calls the Waste Fire Annual Report and there's an eighth edition available. He sent it to me before we talked and it's a very rich source of information gathered from publicly available sources on different aspects of waste fires. He's been doing that since 2015. Therefore, he also observes some changes in the industry, especially changes related to use and abuse of lithium-ion batteries. That you'll hear a lot in this podcast episode, and this, combined with the hands-on experience in extinguishing those fires, gives him a very unique perspective to talk about this hazard and why in this industry it really is a big problem and why this industry requires a little bit different solutions and approaches than other industries. However, a lot of what's been innovated for waste and recycling industry can be definitely used in different aspects of fire safety engineering. So it's not just that little niche of waste and industry fires. This podcast episode is perhaps relevant to many, many more and maybe you will get some more ideas about how to fire engineer safe spaces in different places, not just waste and recycling fires. Anyway, I found this topic very interesting to talk. I've learned a lot about this. Ryan is a very charismatic speaker, so I hope you enjoyed that as well. Let's not prolong this anymore. Let's spin the intro and jump into the episode. Welcome to the Firesize Show. My name is Wojciech Wigrzyński and I will be your host.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:The FireSense Show is into its third year of continued support from its sponsor, ofar Consultants, who are an independent, multi-award winning fire engineering consultancy with a reputation for delivering innovative, safety-driven solutions. As the UK-leading independent fire risk consultancy, ofar's globally established team have developed a reputation for preeminent fire engineering expertise, with colleagues working across the world to help protect people, property and the planet. Established in the UK in 2016 as a startup business by two highly experienced fire engineering consultants, the business continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, with offices across the country in eight locations, from Edinburgh to Bath, and plans for future expansions. If you're keen to find out more or join OFR Consultants during this exciting period of growth, visit their website at ofrconsultantscom. And now back to the episode. Hello everybody, I am joined here today by Ryan Fogelman, partner at FireOver. Hey, ryan, good to see you.
Ryan Fogelman:Hey Woj, how are you?
Wojciech Wegrzynski:It's good to finally get face-to-face with you, yeah, well across an ocean in between, but still as close as you can get to a normal everyday meeting. Ryan, you're in the podcast because you are very interested in waste fires and recycling fires. You shared with me a report that you're writing Apparently it's the eighth edition and this one on the cover says we are at war. Like what kind of war we are at and why it's on the cover of your report Of course?
Ryan Fogelman:No, listen, I mean, I have a vape that's exploding online, right, and I think I mean the reality is, is that, like? I started doing reporting in 2015 because I really didn't understand if there was an issue, right, I was looking for the, you know, fire rover technology. I was looking at different occupancies and I was working with fire engineers, which I mean I think you know one of them, which is Andy Lynch, but you know, so I'll give him a shout out here. But yeah, so, so really, I mean, the first five years, we kind of had no idea what was going on, and I think in the waste and recycling industry, from 15 to 18, no one really understood that lithium-ion batteries were about to invade the waste stream. And again, I think, around 15, 16, 17,.
Ryan Fogelman:That's when I started warning waste and recycling operators I mean across the globe, but mostly in the US and Canada that there was a lithium-ion battery wave coming just from the sheer number of takeaway EVs, right, I focus on, like the personal storage, personal electronics, right, like the things that we want that are getting smaller and smaller, that are getting into our waste recycling, our scrap metal facilities.
Ryan Fogelman:So really focused on that for the first five years and then really got fortunate that we were able to prove that the solution worked inside waste and recycling. And then I really started looking at reported fires, because those fires were the ones that were reported in the media and typically those were the ones that were two alarm, three alarm, four alarm fires, and so I really wanted to get a baseline of information. And you know, 10 years later, you know, as I have causation, I have, you know, consequences, the cost, the insurance, all the different layers. So really what you read in that eighth annual report and again it's available on Amazon for a hard copy or I'm happy to. If you follow my fire safety report on LinkedIn, I'm happy to give you a PDF copy of it of anyone who asks.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah, I'll put the credentials in the show notes. So if you're listening and you would like to put your hands on their report, just send an email and and probably you'll get it. You said reported fires is the thing that I. I see in your report that you're referring to public reported fire incidents and there is something I'm not sure what nomenclature is it like likely or a total known fire incidents and but anyway, statistics is difficult in fire safety, especially if you're not a governmental facility and don't have access to to or don't have a reporting set up. So so, first thing, first, where do you get your statistics from and what's a publicly reported fire from your perspective?
Ryan Fogelman:Right, so for me it's reported in the media, right, so it has to have been reported publicly in the media. Now, again, that doesn't mean that you don't have. Sometimes fire stations will you know, or fire professionals will put in that they've had a report and it becomes public record. But like I don't include any of the 2,910 fires that we reported last year, right, like that's internal numbers. And then I know a lot of the OEMs will actually do internal reporting. But the one thing in the US we don't require reporting from any of our public or any of our waste and recycling operators. So really the idea was at the time there was no one else out there doing this. And again, now, if you look at it and you put waste and recycling facility reports, it's actually like you know, you see all my data and then the US EPA has done another data saying that my numbers are conservative.
Ryan Fogelman:You know me out of the UK did another NWRA, which is National Waste and Recycling Association. So the whole idea is what is the problem? And my numbers have always been uberly conservative, which is why I only use publicly reported fires, the reason why I say that I think that the number of major fires is about six times as high is because, if you look at the UK, they had 20 years of data where they had gone back and you know, just simple population 66 million versus our 360 million. So I'll multiply that times six. But you know, australia has come out and said that they have 10,000 fires at their waste and recycling facilities. Right, like I know my numbers are overly conservative, but that's because it was always suspect. Someone looking at me who actually has a product. Am I being arbitrary or am I being like subjective, right? So, like, I just had to make sure that I kept it so that anyone else could do my analysis and it just gave us a baseline.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:But again those fires come up. And, for example, in Poland we had a massive storage problem some years ago. I had a podcast episode about storage facilities with a colleague from Norway, Ragny, and in that episode I already said that I suspect in Poland mostly that was actually criminal activity, but it's one of the things that happened. So another thing that I wanted to ask you for the start uh, like why waste and recycling industries? Like what's so special about this industry? Why capture your attention?
Ryan Fogelman:yeah, I mean honestly it was. I was looking at utilities and, like I was actually working with andy and a company about, like, working on transformers, right, and like you know, the idea was, if you use a certain type of suppression, you and you get to the fire fast enough, you can actually put out a transformer fire, which you know, again, they're typically energized Right. So you know, we were basically, we had proposed a solution where you would have a fog spray onto a transformer and you know, I spent just as much time kind of going after that market and most of the utilities that I met with basically said that, like, until a regulator said that they had to alleviate that risk, they weren't going to work on it, even if it did work. And again, I'm always working with fire engineers, I'm always working with experts, right, like, I know that, like I have a law degree in an MBA, I'm a marketing guy, I'm a sales guy, right, like, like. But I also I always defer to experts on everything we do, right, and even in any solution that we put together.
Ryan Fogelman:So, to answer your question, waste and recycling there was no regulation in the United States and like, if you're trying to change the way the world fights fires, right? Like everybody warned me that it takes decades, right? I mean, I had to get into NFPA and like I had to get into the rules and we had to do all these different things, you know. And then we had to get FM certification, which I mean we just got the first FM certification using six different standards for our solution. The reality is, is that just getting that and understanding how hard it is If I had to do it in a laboratory it would have been just crazy expensive and it would have been very difficult to bring this innovation to market. Waste and recycling allowed me an unregulated industry to basically put in additional suppression and fire protection to allow, you know, you still put your sprinklers in, but our system would basically be put in as a supplemental system, and then we didn't know if it was going to work.
Ryan Fogelman:So, frankly, like to answer your question USA Hauling and Republic, you know which was, you know ReCommunity at the time, and Resource Waste and ReWorld. Right, which was Covanta at the time. Like a lot of these guys invested in our product early to see and help us figure and make sure that it worked, and then, after five years, I think, we scaled it. So we have over 800 facilities that we're protecting across the globe. We're in, you know, we're in Europe. Now we're in Australia. We're actually heavily in France. It's actually our second biggest market. How were we able to prove to FM that we should be certified without having the experience, without doing it and proving it in a laboratory and under laboratory conditions? So I mean fast forward now. You know we put out 268 fires last year.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:We put out more fires on the front line than any other organization in the world. Well, let's step back a bit. So let's discuss the industry, what it looks like and what you're dealing with. So what type of waste industry facilities are you considering in your work and where does the hazard lie? So I guess it's not just storage, it's more than that, right.
Ryan Fogelman:Oh, absolutely. I mean, these are active locations with inherent risk of fires, right? So think about rubber recycling, tip floors and transfer stations and MRFs, their storage and their bailing activities, where they basically so really, if you think of recycling, you're basically taking a bunch of trash right and then you're bringing it to a facility, you're dumping it on a floor, then you're putting it through sorters and they have robotic sorters and other things, but on that tip floor, when you're processing that material, you end up getting accelerants, you get propane tanks, you get huffing bottles, you get vapes, you get all these myriad of stuff, right, and again, for us, what makes our solution different is that we're looking at it, verifying it before we shoot it. So we're actually fighting the fires in lieu of the fire department in certain situations, right, which is really what our FM certification is so like.
Ryan Fogelman:And it could be scrap metal. So there's batteries inside cars and we do a ton of scrap metal facilities where they're taking cars, they're crushing them and then all those extra batteries are getting into their end piles or their front end piles, right? So it really is. When I say waste and recycling, we do organics, we do paper, plastic waste, I mean we're doing a ton of different types of materials and like the biggest thing we do is probably hazard materials. So we do a ton of solidification pits and that type of thing. So I mean we are doing like it's high hazard activities that are in buildings as industrial or manufacturing, or outdoors.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:It's kind of interesting because the complexities of defining fire scenarios even for, like your everyday building fire safety engineering. You know occupancies change and the use of stuff changes. You have different equipment and stuff like that, but when you think about what people throw out and what goes into those facilities, that does literally everything. How big is the industry actually Like? How many facilities are there?
Ryan Fogelman:Yeah, no, that's a great question. I mean in the US and Canada, right? Nobody actually knows the number, but the estimate from the environmental research and like it's a research organization that that does like internal resources they call it eref. They say we have 10 000 facilities, so 10 000 waste and recycling facilities in the us and can does that include storage or or storage is is something it it includes storage, but storage is typically part of the material.
Ryan Fogelman:Okay, so, like you're, you're gonna, once you bail it or once you take it, you're're going to process it, and you know there's definitely. If you think of the scrap metal, like, you have cars that have been in accidents, you have scrap metal yards, you have pick and pull yards, which are different, right, because you know so there's different layers. Do you take the car before, do you take the car once it's been crushed? I mean, there's a ton of different operators that do different things. But really, when you think of real recycling, right, and this is where, like it was amazing to me, everybody talks about curbside recycling, which is 50% of the fires, right, but like, literally in the United States, it's like one and a half like, so almost 80% of the product that doesn't go into a landfill, right. So think of like one pound or, you know, one ton that doesn't go into a landfill and it's reprocessed and reused. That's mostly your scrap metal guys. So your steel, your ferrous, your non-ferrous, and then your construction and demolition guys that basically handle all of like, if a fire, if a building burns down, right, they're going to take out all of the different materials steel, wood, you know and like and composite board and gypsum and all those different things.
Ryan Fogelman:So like, there's all these different layers, but what's the same about them is that there is an activity and it's an active location changes all the time. You have shredders inside, you have pits, you have operators, you have operators, you have forklifts. You have all these things happening and so, like, when there's a fire, typically what happens in these buildings is smoke fills up the building. Well, we can still shoot and put a fire out, right when, like, we actually fight fires better than firefighters. And again, when I say that most firefighters are happy about that, because they want to fight fires that they're prepared for, right, like, there's enough house fires, commercial fires, apartment fires, right, like that type of fire that when you get to these industrial facilities where you know your piles chain the contamination rates inside each of these things chain, and so you know the reality is is that you want to protect your people and the fire department from actually having to fight these if they don't have to, right, I mean what's the nature of those fires Like?
Wojciech Wegrzynski:if you talk about scrap facilities and so on, my idea is like an outdoor facility where they just took over the things. You paint a different idea in my head that you're talking mostly about indoors facilities, so a building filled with people who are working. So what's the nature of the fire? How big those fires can grow, and is there any specific types of waste and recycling facilities that would be most prone to large consequence fires?
Ryan Fogelman:Yeah, Well, yeah, I mean, I think, like anything else, right, it's like, if you're looking at it from a fire protection perspective, right, what do you do in your initial 10 minutes when something you've done so good operators have less fires than bad operators right, I mean, that's just like. So. Operational best practice is extremely important. You need to do everything you can, and so segregate your piles, make sure that your piles aren't too high, right? Make sure all the different things that are happening that you can control, you control, right, and that's all done with operational best practice. Once that breaks, what typically happens is is that, like, if you think of a traditional sprinkler head, those are going to go off, right, 15 minutes after my system would, because I'm looking at direct heat, direct flash, direct smoke versus steam, analytics and all those different things. So, inherently, most of the time, what happens is it might be a small little fire, it might be a battery, and we spray around it and it's fine. But, most importantly, what our people do on the front lines is they're actually spraying the collateral assets. When we do waste to energy buildings, we're ensuring ourselves that we're not spraying the big grapple that comes down and grabs the trash, because the grapple is actually the most important thing. So, like, there's different rules for every single type of facility and, again, you know, the fire engineers are always important in that, because you're stamping the drawings for any of these continuous flow solutions that we're doing for the ones that were FM approved. So, if you look at it, it's like the nature of the fire can be small, and usually it's small, but what ends up happening is that operational best practice, like let me give you an example right, like, a loader is going to go into a tip floor on the inside of a building and, again like, about 75% of our facilities are indoors and then 25 are outdoors. So what's ends up happening is that that loader goes in.
Ryan Fogelman:When you have a deep-seated fire in a 20-foot pile, how do you handle? Right, you pre-wet it and then you pull away a layer. You pre-wet it, you pull away a layer. Well, really early on, we actually put out a 3,000-degree rubber fire in less than four and a half minutes before the fire department arrived, because we responded to it in, literally like we have to spray on it within a minute, right, like, I mean, typically it's six seconds, 12 seconds, 20 seconds, and we're not only are we spraying, but we're protecting the collateral assets. We're making sure it's an encapsulator agent. So we're making sure that you know we're cooling the properties and then we're waiting for the loader operator. Once we have it properly wet, then you start to pull away a layer, then you wet it, pull away a layer, wet it.
Ryan Fogelman:Well, a lot of times what happens is is these loader operators think best practice is to see a battery fire and pull it outside. But when you have an accelerant inside and it's a deep seated fire one out of 10 times you've literally just created a massive problem. Right, because now you have accelerant everywhere and now the entire building's filled with smoke, and you know. So what we do is we'll focus on those 10 minutes between breakdown and fire professional arriving and we're making sure they get there as fast as possible, and then we're also setting the tripwire earlier. So, like you know, last year we identified 2,910 fires hotspots, confirmed fires or hotspots. Of those, only 17% of the time are we actually doing and engaging. Right, because 80% of the time these guys can handle it.
Ryan Fogelman:But it's like the layers of Swiss cheese, right, like to have a catastrophic, major loss, which is 400 grand or more. We've only had two of those in 10 years, right, and the reason why we've only had two of those in 10 years is because it's all those layers of protection and know. So you just have to ensure, just like you would do for any sort of fire disaster plan. You're basically putting those layers in place and saying let's hope they all work. I mean again, hope's probably not the right word for it, but it's put as many things as you can to try to protect yourself from the inherent risk of something going out of control, which is what happens at a scrap metal facility.
Ryan Fogelman:When you see all the smoke that's sitting out there and it's been burning for 10 hours, right, like they didn't know that it was going to happen. So early detection is important. But now, how fast can I fight that fire? And like what we're doing for a lot of these big yards and the storage yards, like paper storage, all these, we basically put a 40 foot like think of a water tower that a human used to handle. We do that by ourselves and it's literally like you don't have to put in the huge tank, you just take water underground, go straight up 40 feet and we literally put our stuff at the very top and you know we're protecting 350 feet each or you know 150 feet each way. I mean, so it's it's kind of um, it's kind of a large, large piece.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I'll put links if someone wants to see that, because there's some interesting material you can see for sure. Um about the technology. Let's talk about, perhaps, the causes of fires in in in the scrapyards facilities or waste and recycling facilities, because I find that interesting. You work with your own statistics. You also refer refer to some materials from the UK. Let's perhaps discuss those. So what causes fires on waste and recycling facilities and what's the balance between different types of fires that you have to find?
Ryan Fogelman:Yeah. So basically I've come down to this based on every like I've read every single possible thing out there. I see studies I'm part of I mean a lot of the times I'm part of helping set up what the study looks like. But when you look at it, 50% of the fires that we're seeing in waste and recycling and scrap right, because it's it's all the same we're seeing batteries, it's 50% and, like you know, we put together like a cost in the UK of what you know it costs a year and that. So that's $1.2 billion in the U? S of just fires caused by batteries alone. In this, in the waste industry, yes, in the waste and recycling, yes, and like so. So basically, waste and recycling facility fires in U? S and Canada costs two and a half billion dollars based on you know me as numbers, right, because the reality is is that when you extrapolate it out, what ends up happening is that 50% of the fires that they're dealing with are household, non-hazardous waste, which in the US we see kind of the same thing.
Ryan Fogelman:Half those fires are there. Of those fires, it's half batteries, the other half is the traditional fires that have been causing issues forever, right, accelerants, first of all. Hot and dryness is a huge factor, like we used to see a summertime spike where we would get a big spike starting in like June, july. Now, I mean, we just had 10 more fires in January than we've ever had in history. And again, the scary thing for me is is that I'm protecting 7% of the 10,000 facilities in the US and Canada, right? So, like I know my guys aren't having catastrophic losses and I know they're not in the news. Right, I mean, there's been two, I know which ones those are. So then you say, okay, of the rest of them, we're having more fires on a smaller group of folks, which is why I'm saying that the numbers are getting worse and it's all due to batteries. Right, hot and dryness is a problem, but that's just an additional factor. Right, arson's an issue. Operation, like staffing's an issue. Right, like there's, there's a number of different what do you mean by staffing?
Wojciech Wegrzynski:is is like mistakes by people, or what do you mean by that?
Ryan Fogelman:not necessarily mistakes, but, like on on these floors, you have spotters, right? So a lot of times you have spotters that are trying to find big things, but the problem is, like you can't find the batteries because they're too small and like even like you know, there's there's these new x-ray, like vision. There's a company called vizia that that does an amazing job on the sorting line. That will literally look at all of your products and tell you which ones are going to contaminate. So like there's things that happen like after us combined, right, that that can allow you to really understand. It's not the fire issue anymore, it's really how do I get the best material that's non-contaminated, right? And so when you have robotics and you have people, versus, like you know, when you have issues with staffing, you can have more fires because you're you don't have anyone. If you've relied on those people for 50 years and now they're gone and then you, you forget that they're the ones that should have been looking out for.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:like they were doing more than just their job, right, they were doing firewatch one thing is because it's it's such an odd industry, if I may say, that you know, uh, and I see so many challenges because the stuff goes in unsorted, like, and the sorting is a process. Then it becomes sorted, so you would have literally a pile of anything and then it would turn into a pile of something you know with potential contamination. So those are like completely different hazards to deal with and they probably exist both in the same facility. So I find that kind of intriguing. And then there's the, the process in between and processing after you. You saw it. So that is actually quite a complicated set of stuff to work. You've mentioned that. You've mentioned that heat and dryness. That's very interesting because you know we would have a hot season and or dry season in the wildfires. So you also see the same thing, uh, in the waste industry, where your statistics would definitely show an increase of fires in it. Tell me more about that.
Ryan Fogelman:I mean I call it the summertime spike, right. So I've seen a couple trends over the years. I mean, I think heat and dryness. The way I figured that out was I was looking at states like florida, which has opposite, like opposite atmosphere, right, they get dry and hot at different times during the year than other spaces. So you can causally connect some of these. But again, I think you've just said it right.
Ryan Fogelman:And there's a guy named Jim Emerson that I work with, which I don't know if you know him from Aon, but I mean he's at Star Risk Insurance. But he basically says we put bombs in our trash, Right. And again, we're not doing it on purpose, but like, think about, like you're at home and you're changing your oil or you're doing a project, Like you're basically taking all of your rags that are filled with paint thinner and you're putting it into a hefty bag that is made to not smell, right, it's made to condense this thing. You close this thing as tight as you possibly can, Cause you don't want it to like smell up your garage. You take that curb, you stick it on the curb side. It's 85, 90 degrees on a summer day. It cooks to 120. Then a truck comes over. You take this thing, you throw it into a truck, it hits an Excel like, and then it gets crushed. So now you're in a hot car and it's crushed and you have an accelerant next to it. Boom, you have an explosion. Right, All you need is a spark. So you're seeing a ton of truck fires because of it. Then that truck goes in and dumps all that material onto the floor.
Ryan Fogelman:So like we had one in Cleveland where, like it was a firework fire like, and again, I'm sure. But it's like there was a kid whose mom found all his fireworks and said oh man, you can't have fireworks. She throws them away, Right Cause she puts them into. A lot of people call it the magic bin. A lot of people use the F-bomb when they say that right. But I mean the reality is is like you put it in, it disappears.
Ryan Fogelman:In Europe, at least, you guys do some regulation, or at least some like. Looking at recycling and like in the US, you can literally throw whatever you want in it and there's never been consequences up until. I mean, I know they're trying to make consequences now, but we're 10 years into this and this is why I say the waste and recycling operators, they're the victim from an economic perspective. So I look at it and I say, okay, these guys have two and a half billion dollars a year. That who's paying for those? I mean that's operators and insurance companies, right. So now you got to get the insurance companies to stay in this business that now has an inherent risk of fires. That go crazy. So how do you mitigate that risk? Right, and that's really what we do. I mean, we're protecting $15 billion worth of property, plant and equipment for our customers, and I would say 80% of them are self-insured.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Okay, very, very interesting observations. And also, like you said, you came into that in 2015. I don't think batteries would be that big issue in 2015. I guess it was starting there. I mean, you already had some electric vehicles. Tesla was well under operations. You probably had a lot of new devices introduced to the markets back then. Of course, laptops, cell phones. Batteries were in the industry, but definitely not at the scale like they are today. Have you seen the rise of the battery hazard up to the 50% that you observe today, year by year? How did it look from that? You know, looking back over the eight years?
Ryan Fogelman:Yeah, I mean it's a hockey stick In 15, 16, 17, and 18, and the reason I say in 18, japan came out and said they had six times the amount of fires they had had the year before because of batteries, right. So like when they hit the stream, nobody knew how to deal with the fires. So you had an initial push of catastrophic losses and again there was probably five or six in. You know across the globe that everybody was real concerned about Kind of the same thing with Surprise Arizona and the first time a firefighter got hurt. So everybody talks about that, where firefighters have to take a defensive approach to going into lithium ion battery fires because they shoot projectiles, right, like they have toxic smoke. There's so many bad things that can kind of can go with this. So I started telling people in 18 that the word started to make sense. But, like this is where I came up with something called the vape effect.
Ryan Fogelman:So, like my biggest pet peeve is that you have a lot of guys out there and they're educating the consumer how to do something, but there is no way for them. So you know, you, if you can educate the consumer to recycle properly, that's great. So I go in and I do a lot of these. I have a TikTok account and I try to teach kids how to recycle, you know. So, like I'm walking into in the United States we basically have Staples, lowe's and Home Depot. They take most personal storage, personal electronics, right, like those batteries. So I walk in and I'm bringing a electric toothbrush and you know, the Staples person was like no, thank you, you can't give us this. And I'm like why? They're like it's a biohazard. And I was like, oh, that's weird. I'm like so you guys can't accept biohazards or hazard material? And again, what's the definition of a hazard material? We deal with this all the time in fire and I'm on the so trying to figure out what is that definition.
Ryan Fogelman:Butes, and then I go into Altria's website and literally, if you look at 2015 through 2021, we had an average of like 300 and something fires. Right, it's gone up 19% over the last three years of fires that we're seeing publicly reported and again, I'm protecting 7% of these that I know aren't included. So like we're getting a smaller pie and we're getting more hazards. So when I look at the vape effect, it's like you have smokers who Altrio will say from 21 or 23 to 25, there were 6 million US and Canadian 21 year olds that went from smoking cigarettes to vapes. And all of us know there's I mean there's no place to dispose of vapes here In the UK.
Ryan Fogelman:It's about 17% recovery here. There is literally nowhere to drop them off. So now you have 1.2 billion vapes, right, and then you have nowhere to drop them off, so, like they're getting in the waste stream because they have nowhere to properly dispose, you just throw it in your bin, right. So now you don't put it in recycling, you stick it in your waste bin. Well, now it still causes the same issue, right?
Wojciech Wegrzynski:But by vapes you mean, like those single-use items.
Ryan Fogelman:Single-use yes, Okay.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:So I guess the logic with this item is that it comes with like low-quality battery because it's not supposed to serve for it's not a low quality battery, it's just a battery.
Ryan Fogelman:It could be the best quality battery ever, but now that vape's being thrown into a truck, it's being crushed in the truck, it's being thrown on a tip floor, it's being driven over a million times. Or think about this, right, like when you take your car and you get in a car accident, how many of these, like your earbuds and all these things, are inside the car? Well, I used to think, well, why don't they go into the cars and, like, really process them? Well, the reality is is that they can't go into a car and process it because there could be drugs, there could be needles, there could be all these other things that they're opening themselves up to, and it's not worth that hazard. So a lot of times, I mean the big guys will cut the tops of cars off and just shake them, but, like, really, you end up with all these little batteries that get into the end use piles, because you know they just make it through and then all of a sudden they pop when they're driving in a truck. Right, batteries are very safe. Right, lithium ion batteries are one of the safest technologies in the entire globe that we've ever seen in the entire world.
Ryan Fogelman:When you handle them with care, they're fine. When that we've ever seen in the entire world. When you handle them with care, they're fine. When you treat them rough, of course you're going to have issues. Well, guess what? Waste and recycling industry is not gentle on trash, right? So you know. The reality is is that they're going to have their fires and we, just like we created a system that works within how they work, because the answer is always slow it down and then process through it. But then now you're trash. Just you know. If it's six times less productive now you're six times more expensive. So, from a purely economics perspective, this is where it's like we have to figure out a way to let manufacturers provide drop-off locations. Right, that's really the idea. We need more drop-off locations, convenient drop off locations. I can't look at someone and say you're doing something wrong if I don't give them the ability to actually do the right thing.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Well, I'm all in for banning single use vapes. They are annoying as hell to me.
Ryan Fogelman:I don't. I mean, I look at it, it's, it's banning it or not I mean I don't like, I don't like, I honestly don't care. I just know that if you have no place to dispose of them and now I have 1.2 billion, that it's growing every year. So now next year it's 1.4, 1.8, 1.10. And all of these guys are moving from traditional cigarettes over. It's a wave, and like like Altria, like like UK has, or put them all over, like a lot of countries will do it here. They just, you know, again, everyone's afraid of it and no one's requiring it, so it just doesn't happen.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:No, for me, it's just intriguing that you are able to literally trace the spike into a single product introduced to a market. Well, I was just saying like I'm not saying that's the only thing.
Ryan Fogelman:I'm saying. That's one thing. That's so big that it's like, and then we wonder why the number's going up. It's like I mean it could be something else, but I mean the reality is is like I'm pretty confident that that's like a major contributing factor that's driving.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:We've seen something similar with scooters and compartment fires and it's something that the fire brigade started reporting many years ago I think Vancouver was probably the first, or New York. They started reporting increasing number of scooter fires and today everyone's realizing that scooters are perhaps a very big threat. It's interesting that I mean, if you ask me about the most hazardous item in the trash, I would not call vape, it would not be in my first hundred items, that I would say. But but if you consider this being, like you know, random, overwhelming in numbers and prevalent, like everywhere, it's really interesting.
Ryan Fogelman:I wonder if we have more items like that or more items are being introduced to market like that, uh, well, yeah, I think I mean and again, it's not just vapes, though, right, like we have scooter fires, so we had a fire and I can show you the video like, literally, a, a loader drove over a, a battery. It had 14 different pouches in it right, or 14 different compartments. They shot out like five, six projectiles started five different fires in a massive pile of of msw and we sprayed every single one of them. Fire department arrived on scene. Guys weren't there.
Ryan Fogelman:So my biggest pet peeve is, if you're going to have your guys on the front lines fighting fires, make sure they're prepared and have the right tools. Right, you're not going to send Batman out without his utility belt, so don't ask someone to walk six feet above us a battery fire and spray it with some sort of like. And again, like I'm agnostic on suppressants because everybody out there says that their stuff works great. All I know is is that you can't put thermal like you can't put out thermal runway, like you can't stop thermal runaway from happening. And if anyone disagrees, please prove me wrong. Right, but the reality is, is that what we do well is we soak the material, we work on all the collateral assets we do from a like and again, I can see through darkness, I can see through smoke, so we're doing everything we can to protect that specific type of fire, knowing that I have all these other hazards that could make it worse or exacerbate.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:So perhaps let's talk a little bit about the innovations that you work on. So I know just a little bit about the solution that you're proposing, which seems to be a remotely operated suppression tool. If you can just briefly tell me about it, how does it work and what's the concept behind it?
Ryan Fogelman:Well, yeah and like, okay, so you have automated systems out there, right, we're not an automated system, okay so, and like? The reality is, is that we use just like a doctor, right, we're going to. We were looking for symptoms of a fire, because I'm trying to catch, I'm looking for symptoms of anything going wrong, any sort of heat abnormality, and then we look for flashes right, I have optical flame detectors, and then we have smoke for steam analytics, then we have our AI, just like everybody else, right, and it all comes to us. The difference with us is that we look and verify with professionals I like every single piece of hay in a haystack to find the needle, so we catch it early enough.
Ryan Fogelman:The problem with an automated system is that you have to dumb down the solution, because you basically, by dumbing it down, you have to literally make it less sensitive, right? Because what ends up happening is that a lot of people, they'll go buy a camera, they think they're plug and play and they, you know, like they start to get alarm fatigue, right? Because, literally, looking at all these things, well, we're set up for alarm fatigue. We look at hundreds of thousands of things every single day, looking for and clearing most of them, the ones we don't clear, it's because we caught them early. So, like I might most of the time. I mean we fought 268 fires last year like actual suppressed fighting fire. Of those, I'd say probably 95% sprinkler heads never went off right Because we're fighting like we're fighting an area right and you need to get 30, 40 feet high right To get that 180 degrees from a radiant temperature to actually put off that sprinkler head. So what's really amazing about like and it's our utility patents based around it, and really what FM is, all these different layers, like in Detroit we manufacture all of our own fire panels, we make all of our own boxes, we take I mean we use FLIR cameras because we're one of the top refurbishers of FLIR cameras and for us you're not buying an early detection system, you're basically buying a fire department that is on scene, that is going to fight your fire for you in lieu of your employees or with your employees in lieu of the fire department or with the fire department, right, and we're all working together for that common cause. And I have I mean I have some like that have our continuous flow, which is what as FM? That is, basically we're part of the sprinkler and you know we're part of the primary system. A fire engineer has stamped the drawings, right.
Ryan Fogelman:You guys have, like put us in and basically said, hey, this makes sense for 100,000 square feet, the first 40,000 square feet that have unobstructed views, that's where we're putting the fire rover system, the backend 3000, you know what I mean. We'll put in those views. But everything in the middle, that's conveyors and other stuff, like I mean we do some conveyors and e-stops and stuff like that. But like the reality is that we're not saying that we're good for everything. We're actually saying we're only good when we have line of sight indoors, industrial and outdoors is typically where this type of firefighting works.
Ryan Fogelman:Now, when you say storage, like we do like a really large storage operation, we do a ton of them. But like when you don't have a lot of activity in it, you might not need a system as robust as ours, right? Because unless there's some real big issue like we have like low density plastics, right, you know that that fire gets out of control and you can't control it. So they spec us in lieu of, like, a high density sprinkler system which doesn't work as well as what our system 15 minutes earlier that's going to spray it and try to you know, basically come up with a result early. So that does that make, does that make sense? So I think the real big thing is is that I have a human being who's literally fighting all these things. Right, there is no. I've never once accidentally shot in my entire life. We use 440 gallons per incident Like we use like even FM did a study in 2020 for smart monitors. We use 88% less water than most alternatives.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:You know the industry. The industry is extremely standardized and it's hard to innovate in this space. And I like, on one hand, I understand completely the approach. On the other hand, I also understand why industry is so in standardized solutions, passive systems I mean. I see value in the solution that you're proposing. I'm not sure if mainstream is ready for that, but why not If it works and fire engineers can design a safer system for that. Thank you for putting another tool into my toolbox. Can you tell me about that human component? So there's actually a person behind the operation of the of the device?
Ryan Fogelman:Yeah, and that's where, like, so they're fire rover agents. I'm like I mean that part of our FM was was around that as well. So we have FM, ul, five diamond, like our facilities and, again, like our guys, all they do every day is fight fire. So I think, like when you say failure points, like I agree with you 100%. I think the biggest issue that I've seen in fire protection and again, like I'm not judging fire protection, I mean we were our box was in National Fire Protection Association's fire book last time. You know we're in, I mean 10 years in we've proven that our solution works and I'm like I am on the floor with how much of acceptance we actually have gotten right, because everybody said the same thing to me 10 years ago. Like, dude, you're wasting your time, don't even like you know this is ridiculous.
Ryan Fogelman:But I think what makes us different is that every solution that I see and again, you're a fire engineer, I spent so much time with fire engineers you guys will spec a system and you're putting all these disparate systems together and then sometimes you need to have, like, for us I do the full maintenance, full monitoring, bumper to bumper warranty for the life of the contract. I don't guarantee that I put a fire out. I guarantee that my system is going to work when it's needed. I don't see that in fire protection, right, I see people hand the keys over to your sprinkler system and they basically say, hey, go get it tested by someone else. So for us it's like there's one throat to show if something goes wrong or something goes right, it's my fault or it's you know. Again, it's usually my fault, right? Because, like when things are good, you know you get the good email every once in a while.
Ryan Fogelman:But I mean, the reality is is that I think what makes us unique is that everything's under one roof and it doesn't mean that, like when Woj is going to go and you're going to say, hey, I have this facility that I'm doing for a battery manufacturer and here's what I'm looking to do, there might be specific areas that you put our system in and that area becomes like the one throat to choke, right. So, yeah, I still need water from you. So if your water doesn't work, then there's, my hands are up, there's nothing I can do, right. So that's where, like, our self-contained unit kind of works better. Um, for that, and that's why, you see, like our self-contained unit is a box that's six to eight minutes, and that's it right, and that's what we build our teeth on, so that that's a box that has its own water supply.
Ryan Fogelman:You don't plug it to yes okay yeah, you just put it on a concrete pad, internet electricity, and then we, we custom pipe everything in, we do it all and like and again we come out there and we look at it, we make sure it's working. We have a heartbeat with the system. We know if anything's wrong. We have cameras all over it so we know if anyone's doing work on it. Even our guys we're watching our guys doing work on the customer has to do nothing.
Ryan Fogelman:So this is where, like, the issue that I always see is that when something doesn't work, it usually comes down to it's rusted, someone didn't do maintenance, something happened right, like that blame comes in and for us, we take that out and we leave it. And again the insurance companies like that because the insurer is basically saying, okay, do I trust this operator or do I trust FireRover? And typically you know, like more and more now and especially now that we've I mean, we literally had to test to six different standards, so FM approved, certified, we had six different standards that we had to approve to right. So everybody else, if you have a fire door, you go in and you say, hey, fm, where's your definition of fire door? Okay, how much does it cost? They look at your fire door. As long as it meets specs, it's good right For us.
Ryan Fogelman:I have like six different layers monitor assembly, our fire panel, our contact center, control room. So it is a lot of different pieces that if we don't do our job it might be worse than other stuff. But I mean the fact is is knock on wood, I mean we do our job right.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:So the more I talk to you, the more I understand the placement of your innovation in the waste technology. I mean, I assume the consequences of the fire are pretty huge must become, you know, the curve of fire becoming very difficult to put out, must become very steep. You know, compared to, for example, a car park, an office or something, it's just a growing fire, but in here the little accessibility to the facility, the fact that the fire may grow concealed and you don't really know there are these widespread potential ignition sources. You don't have that much in your normal occupancies. Of course we have devices, but you don't have like a 20 feet pile of junk in which you randomly have a thousand potential ignition sources being squeezed all the time by the mass that's constantly moving right. So it makes a lot of sense. So, to end with, what's your plan for the future? How do you intend to win the war?
Ryan Fogelman:Well, okay, so I mean how I intend to win the war in waste and recycling is continue to be putting our systems in and to continue to look at like the. I think the x-ray systems are going to be helpful, but I think like our future, like you said. I mean it's like there's other occupancies where this makes sense. So like a hangar, for example, right 409 was kind of rewritten, you know, to open up a little bit of expanded. Like you know, do we work as good or better? I mean, in hangars, you know I actually have an appropriate response for the actual hazard. So like, if it is a heptane fire, right, or a jet fuel fire, like I can fog spray on and have everybody leave until the professionals get there, right. If it's a lithium-ion battery that started in a tool, you know belt, I can go spray that tool belt differently, right, and I can fog spray versus straight stream and I can do all these different things. So, like the idea becomes, do you put a 30 000 gallon deluge system in where people have been hurt, right, or do you put in a system like ours? I think there's a ton of different occupancies.
Ryan Fogelman:We've been very fortunate for the first 10 years to really cut our teeth here, but I think the idea of this type of a solution working in a lot of other occupancies I mean utilities, transformers, right, like you know, when you have a transformer fire, there are things that you can do. When you hit something early, that literally takes the idea of what a catastrophic loss is right and takes it to that most minuscule piece. As long as you catch it early, a lot of this stuff dissipates right Now. That's important. But all the guys out there saying, hey, we do early detection, that's not the only thing. Right, like, that's one piece and part of it. What differentiates us is human beings that look, verify and we maintain and we, like you know, this is where it's a uh, it's a full one throat to choke how quick is the human response?
Wojciech Wegrzynski:you've seen the conversation that you can take it down in six seconds. I, I think you said something like that, so so how does the human reason? What does the chain of chain of event looks like?
Ryan Fogelman:So, so we'll create a communication protocol with every one of our customers, different, right, because some are open 24, seven, some are open winter, summer, blah, blah, blah, all these different things. So, like we're constantly like working to say, okay, do we call you? We have some customers that will say, before you spray a fire, call us first. So then instead of having one minute, it's three minutes, right, but it's like, but then they're saying, why didn't you get it faster? And we're like, well, cause, you told us that this is what you wanted us to do. So, like there's certain level of care that we offer, right, which is like when we see a major fire, we're hitting it right, Like I don't, your guy has to get out of the way. Right, we don't hit people. I mean we've hit a couple. I mean you're wearing a you know, headgear and everything else, right, like in safety gear. So you know, typically, like you know, it's basically like getting kind of a punch, right, so it's not. I mean this isn't going to hurt anyone, like that. But you know, like that standard of care and that that duty is always set up where it's like okay, call our supervisor on site, call the fire department, call this, and all these different things. And what's really nice with ours is that if I have a continuous flow solution like we have some facilities with 57,. You know nozzles, right. So if I'm spraying a nozzle, I have a team of people. So if I need three different nozzles to spray, I have three different people working three different sets of fires from three different views, but all together they're working together, right. So, like it really does provide a different layer of of. You know, we're a remote fire brigade, that is, you know, constantly there to ensure at two in the morning you have the same response that you would have in the middle of the afternoon.
Ryan Fogelman:You know, and again, I love firefighters, right, like, I mean we're not. I mean, the first time I did this at FDIC and I launched this product 10 years ago, like it was like everyone was saying like oh hey, you're putting us out of business. Like no firefighter wants to fight any of these fires, right, like in chemicals, in refining, we do chemicals, we do refining. But like in chemicals, right, like our guys, if there's a fire, like I might not put a fire out all the time, right, like I'm doing for waste and recycling, but when there's a massive fire. It's so important. And again, when that happens and I can show you that it worked that's a huge different piece of it, right? So, and again, your guy didn't have to go in there and fight it with all the hazards that come from a chemical facility, right? Or with all those different things.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Cool Ryan, to wrap it up, any final message that you want to share with colleagues working with waste and recycling industry? I think that this business or perhaps not business, I think the issues with this industry will propagate and increase, Like if you've seen the hockey stick rise with the battery fires. I don't think we're at the end of the hockey stick we can't be right and again like so.
Ryan Fogelman:so you know, I I spoke at one of our national laboratories here, right, I do talk to a lot of different folks and I I kind of. What what's nice is is that, like we're in nine of the top 10 waste recycling companies, so we we understand what's going's going on there, but that doesn't like. I'm in the fire protection business, right, like, and I try to explain to people I'm like the reality is I'm trying to change the way the world fights fires from water, water, water to targeted remote response. But again, it's like FM was kind of our first level of proving that we could do this in a way that fits with the industry. Because, like, you know, listen, I know, from the beginning of this conversation to the end, you're like okay, like you're someone else coming out saying something unbelievable which is probably not true. And, by the way, like I do the same thing. Everybody in the world calls me and tells me that they have the best new NFPA approved 18A encapsulator agents ever been made and it's plant based and it's so perfect for you you could drink it and you could put it out of fire. Like, I'm sorry, but those aren't the ones putting out fires, right, like, I mean, like it's not your suppressant, right, like that's not your answer. Those are the sales guys that are out there fricking selling suppressant, that I mean, fluorescent, that I mean it's like selling perfume. I mean you know, you, you sell this much, you know of cost and you're selling gallons of this stuff and you know it's a really good business. But it's like for you and I it doesn't work Right.
Ryan Fogelman:And I've been trying to build the respect of fire engineers I have a number of them over the years Like I never do anything without someone who's going to understand what they're doing and tell me why. And again, andy Lynch has been one of my best guys, so you know. But again, there's a guy, bruce Campbell at Jensen Hughes, that has been a huge supporter of us. I mean there's just a lot of guys who understand that ours is different. But I needed to prove FM, to actually prove to you and every other fire engineer in the world that because I call you guys the fire lawyers, right, like you guys are the ones who are like, okay, buck stops here.
Ryan Fogelman:Right, like I can write like, but again, you know, now that we have FM, I would, I would hope, and, and as we continue to do this, I would hope that we can build a little bit more of an understanding where people are saying, yeah, this is the way of the future and it does work. Right. And you know, using 400 gallons versus 10, you know, a million gallons results in a million gallons of firewater which someone has to clean up and it gets into areas and it leachates and all the other stuff. So the really I mean I am trying to change the way the world fights fires, but not to conquer the world, but to actually help. And like I am doing this, like I have a number of other things that I could be doing in my life right, like this to me is something that you know it's it's it's why I'm so passionate about.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I know the industry fairly well and one thing that I can appreciate is you giving fire engineers another tool set, and especially a tool set that fits so well for this difficult and challenging industry. So so, uh, that's one thing that I have to give you. I, as a fire engineer, how can I not appreciate someone giving me more options? So my job is to engineer and I have to engineer with something. If I have five things to choose from and and apply the best solution to my problem, then I can do my engineering better.
Ryan Fogelman:But, yeah, no, a hundred percent. And, like the reality is, is that FM is going to tell you whether FM or UL or you know something's going to tell you whether you cause, you got to have something to back your, your opinions. Right, like you can do the analysis yourself. But and that's where, like, since the very beginning, I've spent all my time like I wasn't trying to sell the product. I was talking to fire engineers and insurers. Right, because to me, understanding those two different areas were important.
Ryan Fogelman:The fire professionals, of course it's important, but most of them will defer to what we do because we have more experience, right. So you know, I mean, in the United States, 700,000, you know, of our 1.2 million firefighters are volunteers. So you know like they're, they look to us for help, right, where I look to the fire engineers for help, right, because you know I think you can engineer a lot of this out of, out of the equation, and they're really you know, again, they're the front line. But they're the last thing you want to do and this is it's my biggest pet peeve Don't use your firefighters as your first line of defense for a fire, like any business that is doing that dude, like spend the money and put in the stuff that makes sense, because the firefighters are not there to fight a chemical fire.
Ryan Fogelman:Right Like maybe in New Jersey, maybe in Texas. Right Like where they're like prepared for it and that's all they do, but either way they still don't want to fight it. Right Like they want to go home to their families, and I want them to go home to their families. Right Like if we could save a life. That's extremely important and I mean there are. I mean I do believe that we've definitely saved lives over 10 years. So my wife always tells me you know my old job, I wasn't saving lives. So now I can be like I hope I've saved one, that I hope I've saved one. That's all I ask.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Fantastic. Let's end on this positive thought, thank you. Thank you, ryan, for coming to Fire Science Show and good luck with your applications.
Ryan Fogelman:No, listen, I appreciate it. Woj, thank you so much for having me and I look forward to you know, hanging out as we get more into, you know, europe and the rest of the world, and you know I have a feeling you're going to end up over here too. A little bit more too right, maybe, I mean if we're lucky. But you know, listen as our worlds start to collide. I look forward to working with you for the, you know, couple decades, and that's it.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this one. I've enjoyed talking to Ryan a lot, actually more than I thought I will. I'm not really into letting marketing people into the podcast, because it's focused on bringing fire science knowledge to fellow fire engineers. I've agreed to do a podcast episode with Ryan not because of the solution that he's proposing, but for the knowledge that he's gathered for decades implementing this and doing this waste fire report. I think that it was not a self-speech but a really decent podcast episode with good discussion around a very interesting problem, which is the waste and recycling industry.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Fires and the kind of problem that emerges along this industry. The lithium-ion battery fires, them being scattered around different parts of our trash or they're generally scattered or all around in our everyday life of our trash, or they're generally scattered or all around in our everyday life. We will have to be dealing with those and those are scattered fire sources that are just waiting to be triggered for ignition and, as ryan kindly said, the waste and recycling industry does not handle them lightly. They go through a lot of abuse. Therefore they cause a lot of fire incidents and those fire incidents, they're very different than what we see normally in our buildings. You may have a fire starting in a concealed pile of trash that also has some accelerants, also has some clothes, some plastics. It's a challenging industry. And of course, the smoke and any smoke, any fire smoke is bad. If you can see the smoke, it's bad already, but the waste fire smoke that's on a different level of nasty.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I really appreciate the ryan's solution to to fight those remotely and perhaps it is a good, perhaps it is a good way. I'm not judging it, I'm. I'm not telling you. This is the best way. Figure out for your own if it's something that for your use it can work or not, and I'm pretty sure ryan's team will give you a good support to to take a well informed decision, not based on marketing materials but based on experience and knowledge they have. Anyway. That would be it for today's fire science show episode, and next week I'll bring more fire science and engineering to you. So join me then. See you there. Bye.