Austen Riggs Center Commends Berkshire Community Scholarship Recipient

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STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. — The Austen Riggs Center has announced that Christopher Broast is the 2015 recipient of the Austen Riggs Center Scholarship.  

Given annually since 1977, the scholarship is awarded to a graduating Berkshire Community College student who has demonstrated academic excellence in the behavioral sciences.

Broast is graduating with an associate degree in Human Services and will be attending the College of St. Rose in September. An army veteran who served in Iraq, Broast interned at Berkshire United Way and the Barrington Stage Company while a student at BCC.  


BCC staff member Jennifer Larkin said Broast has “been a very big positive presence on campus.” Active in student government and the Student Veterans Alliance, he has also been a member of Phi Theta Kappa Leadership. He is currently the Connections Veterans outreach coordinator for the Berkshire County chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness  and is now working at the Berkshire United Way.

The faculty of Berkshire Community College’s Behavioral Sciences department select the annual recipient who is honored with a monetary reward of $500 and their name engraved on a plaque at the college.

Austen Riggs Center, a leading psychiatric hospital and residential treatment program, has been serving adults since 1919. For more information, visit www.austenriggs.org.

 


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State Fire Marshal: New Tracking Tool Identifies 50 Lithium-Ion Battery Fires

STOW, Mass. — The Massachusetts Department of Fire Services' new tool for tracking lithium-ion battery fires has helped to identify 50 such incidents in the past six months, more than double the annual average detected by a national fire data reporting system, said State Fire Marshal Jon M. Davine.
 
The Department of Fire Services launched its Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Investigative Checklist on Oct. 13, 2023. It immediately went into use by the State Police Fire & Explosion Investigation Unit assigned to the State Fire Marshal's office, and local fire departments were urged to adopt it as well. 
 
Developed by the DFS Fire Safety Division, the checklist can be used by fire investigators to gather basic information about fires in which lithium-ion batteries played a part. That information is then entered into a database to identify patterns and trends.
 
"We knew anecdotally that lithium-ion batteries were involved in more fires than the existing data suggested," said State Fire Marshal Davine. "In just the past six months, investigators using this simple checklist have revealed many more incidents than we've seen in prior years."
 
Prior to the checklist, the state's fire service relied on battery fire data reported to the Massachusetts Fire Incident Reporting System (MFIRS), a state-level tool that mirrors and feeds into the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS). NFIRS tracks battery fires but does not specifically gather data on the types of batteries involved. Some fields do not require the detailed information that Massachusetts officials were seeking, and some fires may be coded according to the type of device involved rather than the type of battery. Moreover, MFIRS reports sometimes take weeks or months to be completed and uploaded.
 
"Investigators using the Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Checklist are getting us better data faster," said State Fire Marshal Davine. "The tool is helpful, but the people using it are the key to its success."
 
From 2019 to 2023, an average of 19.4 lithium-ion battery fires per year were reported to MFIRS – less than half the number identified by investigators using the checklist over the past six months. The increase since last fall could be due to the growing number of consumer devices powered by these batteries, increased attention by local fire investigators, or other factors, State Fire Marshal Davine said. For example, fires that started with another item but impinged upon a battery-powered device, causing it to go into thermal runaway, might not be categorized as a battery fire in MFIRS or NFIRS.
 
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