Thursday, February 3, 2011 The oldest Heber Springs (Alabama) manufacturing company has sadly shut down after being there 59 years following significant safety issues and burns related to their gloves. The now out of business Glove Corporation manufactured about 10 different types of firefighting gloves and closed it's doors Monday night. When workers came in on Tuesday, they found a note on the front door telling them they no longer had a job. About 65 people were directly affected. The Gov. Work task force is helping to relocate those without jobs in other industries, as well as provide other assistance.
 
PREVIOUS NOTICE INFORMATION:
 
Thursday, January 27, 2011 The Glove Corp issued a Safety Notice regarding its "Blaze Fighter" firefighting glove but then went out of business.  The Blaze Fighter is currently certified to NFPA 1971-2007 HOWEVER during recent testing, one style of gloves encountered issues with the performance of the conductive heat resistance test. The back of the hand area of the glove did not meet the prescribed performance threshold, as outlined in Section 7.7.5 of the NFPA 1971-2007 Standard. The Blaze Fighter style exhibited issues with test values that were below the minimum performance requirements.

The Blaze Fighter meets the Thermal Protection Performance (TPP) and flame resistance requirements and all other applicable performance requirements of the NFPA 1971-2007 Standard. These gloves were produced from December 2009 through December 2010. The label in the glove will indicate the manufacture date with lot numbers of 12109 through 12310.

While the majority of these gloves have performed satisfactorily in the field, The Glove Corporation has received reported cases of back of hand burns with a few pairs of this glove model.