Berkshire South Announces 2019 Gala Honoree

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GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — Berkshire South Regional Community Center has named Bobbie Hallig as this year's Edwin A. Jaffe Award winner and gala honoree.

Hallig will be presented with the award on Saturday, Sept. 14, at 5:30 p.m. Gala attendees will enjoy cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, a raffle, dinner then a live auction benefiting Youth Programming.

The Edwin A. Jaffe Award, honors an individual or group exhibiting an extraordinary commitment to building community and common purpose within the Berkshires.


"Bobbie Hallig is a wonderful choice for this designation," said Jenise Lucey, executive director of BSRCC. "Her many years of service on Berkshire boards – the Children's Health Program (now CHP), Berkshire Theatre Group, The Nature Conservancy, Berkshire Natural Resources Council, the Rudolf Steiner School, the Mahaiwe Center for the Performing Arts, and Green Berkshires, among others – are highly commendable. We are honored to offer her this token of appreciation not just from Berkshire South, but from all the citizens across the county."

For 50 years, Hallig has served as an officer of the Christ Church of Mt. Washington. She is currently an active trustee with Edith Wharton's The Mount where she is co-chairing a campaign to secure an endowment for the organization. In 1966, she founded International Television Trading Corporation with her husband Klaus Hallig, who she met when she was an air hostess for TWA. The corporation produced the Leonard Bernstein birthday at Tanglewood and had an exclusive 21-year film contract with him, during which they won two Emmys for Bernstein shows for the Great Performances series.

Berkshire South is a nonprofit community based organization which has offered quality services and programs to the Southern Berkshires since opening the doors in July, 2002. Their mission is to create a sense of community and common purpose throughout the region and to enhance the recreational, educational, cultural, health & social well-being of the residents of the southern Berkshires. For more information or to purchase tickets to the gala, visit the website.

 


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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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