Welcome to the final episode of the IAAI’s CFITrainer.Net podcast for the year 2019. As we close out the year, we’d like to look back and reflect on some of our successes and milestones achieved this year, as well as give you a peek into what we have in store for 2020.

Before we get started, we thank all of you who support CFITrainer and this podcast, including our listeners who return month after month and who send us their compliments, ideas, and suggestions for improvement. We truly appreciate the time you take to listen and make this podcast better with your feedback. The podcast and CFITrainer.Net are made possible by funding from a Fire Prevention and Safety Grant from the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program administered by FEMA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. We are also supported by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. We are very grateful for the grant awards and partners who support us, and we are always working on finding new ways to be sustainable. Online donations from podcast listeners and CFITrainer.Net users have just topped $40,000. Thank you for helping reach that milestone. To support CFITrainer.Net and help keep this podcast going, please click the Donate button at the top of this page. Your donation goes directly to the operations or development of new content for CFITrainer.Net. We are glad you are here.

Now let’s look back at this year and preview what’s coming in 2020! CFITrainer.Net now has over 100,000 user registrations. According to Google, over 136,000 users came to CFITrainer this year for 424,000 visits for an average of 12 minutes per visit. Our registered users have earned over 2.6 million credit hours on CFITrainer.Net since the network began. We think these numbers are unbelievable and speak to the hunger for quality, credible training in the fire investigation field and your commitment to constantly improving your skills.

In the last calendar year, CFITrainer.Net released modules on: Fire Investigation for Fire Officers, Fire Flow Analysis, Critical Evaluation and Testing of Commonly Reported Accidental Causes, and Understanding Undetermined. And, we have another one coming for you next week in January 2020 that’s Introduction to Appliances.

On the podcast this year, some you might want to go back and listen too. We gave some timely info on fire investigations in the news, brought you to the scene of the wildland fire training in California, put you in conversation with ATF on how they assist local and state investigators, and informed many of you about what UL discovered in new research in ventilation and fire flow. We also discussed some things to consider when working fires in electric vehicles.

In March of 2019, IAAI debuted a new Evidence Collection web site detailing how to collect over 50 types of evidence commonly found at fire scenes, plus evidence collection checklists, and answers to more than forty frequently asked questions about evidence collection. That website is at IAAIEvidenceGuide.com.

Later this year, we debuted a new feature — multi-program certificates. By taking a series of online modules that are related in a particular way, registered users can now earn an overall certificate in that program of study. Our first two multi-program certificates, Fire Investigation for Fire Officers and Principles of Fire Investigation, have already been earned by over 2200 people. If you’ve taken a few CFITrainer.Net modules, you are probably already partway to earning one or both of those certificates. Professional credentials remain important for skills improvement, meeting professional requirements, and demonstrating that you are learning on an ongoing basis.

Finally, in 2019, we did a lot of work behind the scenes on how we deliver CFITrainer.Net’s online modules, including an improved video player, the elimination of Adobe Flash in the modules, and streamlined media and network traffic handling processes. This has already resulted in a better user experience and was important groundwork for a really exciting thing that will be happening in 2020 — CFITrainer.Net will become responsive so you can view and use it easily on any device, including tablets and smartphones. As part of that process, we will be bringing you a new graphic design and new ways to navigate the ever-increasing amount of content on the site that will make how you decide what to watch more intuitive and more relevant to your professional goals, development, and interests.

In 2020, we will be bringing you six new modules, all of which have to do with technology and fire investigation — from solar energy systems to lithium ion batteries to electric and hybrid vehicles. We are going to be showing you technologies that can assist you in fire investigation. And you’ll probably notice that our 2020 podcasts will also have a technology bent where we will be examining some emerging issues that are affecting origin and cause determination. Plus, we will be turning a spotlight on occupational exposures to carcinogens that every fire investigator must understand and must take relevant precautions to reduce the risk of job-related illness.

As we close out this last podcast of 2019, we thank all the experts who have participated in developing CFITrainer.Net modules, have appeared on this podcast, and consulted with us throughout the years. CFITrainer was built to bring your expertise to a wide audience and we thank you for your generosity in sharing what you have learned with others.

Finally, just a note from me personally and our team at Stonehouse Media. We are so grateful for all of you and the confidence in us that the IAAI and their experts around the world have shown by trusting us as a partner in designing, implementing, and growing CFITrainer.Net. Building this network with the IAAI has been one of our most rewarding projects. We look forward to great things in 2020 and beyond.

Thanks for joining us today on the podcast. We hope your holidays have been fantastic and continue to do so for some days here. And that you’ll get some more R&R with family and friends. Stay safe and we’ll see you in 2020 on CFITrainer.Net.