BY FRANCIS L. BRANNIGAN
Twenty-five years ago, on June 17, 1972, nine Boston firefighters died in the collapse of the Vendome Hotel.2 The brick and wood-joisted part of the structure that collapsed was a hundred years old. Many such old buildings have a serious drawback. Because 25 feet is about the best span for wooden beams, there are a number of interior bearing walls, which cut the space up into small units. The solution is the same as that for the hidden wall trick, where two or more 25-foot-span ordinary construction buildings are combined to make one larger store. The brick wall is cut away, and the brick wall above the opening is supported on a column-and-beam arrangement.
In this case, about a hundred years ago, walls were cut away to make a larger space for a restaurant. The wall above was supported on dual 15-inch wrought iron beams, which were supported on a seven-inch cast iron column. The framing supported not only the wall but about half the second-floor load. The total load was about seven times that permitted for good sand lime- mortared bricks.
In this case, a hole for a duct had been cut in the basement wall, directly below the column, causing the fatal collapse.
The restoration or adaptive-use craze goes on. Even if the authorities require better exit facilities and sprinklers, basic structural defects, such as interconnected voids, are common in old buildings. This is often compounded by dropping ceilings, to conserve heat and air-conditioning. Hidden fire traveling in voids was a key factor in the Vendome incident.
In almost all cases, the emphasis is on glitz instead of on items important to firefighter safety. Budgets for such projects are often low-balled to get the project going with the hope that additional funds will materialize.
Beware the old building being restored.
TWO FIREFIGHTERS DIE IN 1992 INDIANAPOLIS ATHLETIC CLUB FIRE
Two Indianapolis, Indiana, firefighters died in 1992 in an early-morning fire in a nine-story, fire resistive (but with a host of deficiencies), mixed-use building. A number of important lessons are to be learned from this fire, particularly by fire departments that have old “fireproof” buildings in their area.
The fire is reported in “Indianapolis Athletic Club Fire” by Mark Chubb.3 The lessons learned or reinforced in this report are vital. After getting the report, I advise that you study it and ask the question, “Could this happen to us?” From my observation, many could truthfully answer “Yes.”
The Building
The building was built in 1922, when neither state nor city had building regulations. The subsequent adoption of building codes grandfathered in many fundamental defects. Many such buildings exist. Many are on the edge financially, and it is virtually impossible to get them upgraded. Occasionally one is upgraded. At that time, life-safety improvements can be insisted on. Two contrasting buildings are cited on the bottom of page 453 of Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition (BCFS3).
When the improvement of existing buildings is discussed, many attorneys immediately dismiss any effort to improve the fire safety of an existing building as unconstitutional. The United States Fire Administration asked Professor Vincent Brannigan, J.D., to research the subject. He found no U.S. Appellate Court case that accepted a constitutional barrier to the enforcement of a new code to an existing building.4
The building was built in accordance with the 19th century concept of making the structure itself fire resistive, but there was no regard for interior construction, fire load, or vertical openings, which transmit deadly smoke and fire. Study BCFS3, pages 452-458, for the deficiencies of these buildings.
In this case, the steel frame was concrete protected, and the structure was unscathed. A heavy fire load of furniture and large areas of combustible interior trim were pres- ent. The stairways were open, and the exit paths were not continuous. There were large unprotected air shafts, a manual fire alarm that did not transmit an alarm to the fire department, and standpipes fitted with occupant hose but not with fire department standard thread.
The hose outlets were fitted with 100 feet of 112-inch unlined linen hose with a plastic fog nozzle. Such hose is used because it can be folded and racked and because it lacks the rubber liner, which deteriorates with age. It was intended for occupant use only. In my experience, the only fire department use of such hose was by ladder companies, who used it to extinguish incipient fires in exposed buildings.
The Fire
Between 11:45 p.m. and midnight, the club staff detected smoke in the lobby. At 12:06, the clerk called 911.
On arrival, the first unit reported nothing showing–too often the first signal of a disaster. The fire units found a heavy smoke haze in the lobby and a fire alarm panel that indicated that a smoke detector had activated in the basement. It is not at all unusual for a detector signal to originate far from the fire area. An air-handling system undoubtedly was circulating the smoke.
At about 12:17, fire was located on the third floor and was reported as a fire in a dumbwaiter. Smoke conditions at the time did not require breathing apparatus.
Firefighters had mistakenly identified an opening in the louvers in the top half of a Dutch door as a dumbwaiter because of a strong upward draft. In fact, the concealed space above the ceiling was a return air plenum connected to a mechanical shaft.
At this point, the incident commander attempted to call for additional companies. Due apparently to cross traffic and a lack of familiarity with the relatively new trunking system, there was a substantial delay in summoning help. (See “Improving Fireground Radio Communications,” Robert C. Bingham, Fire Engineering, February 1997.)
Note that this fire occurred before the most recent recognition of the need for a rapid intervention unit at serious fires. (See “Rapid Intervention Companies: The Firefighter`s Life Insurance,” Jim Cline, Ed.D., Fire Engineering, June 1995.)
The following is summarized from the detailed report. You must study the report and its sketch carefully to follow the sequence of events:
Engine 7 could not get the occupant hose (often called the house line) from the outlet and decided to extend the line with 50 feet of their own hose. They stretched this from the outlet, through the McHale room to the bar entrance doors. As Truck 13 opened the doors, they lost water because the coupling between the house line and the fire department length of hose (two different threads) failed. They put the plastic fog nozzle back on the house line, donned SCBA face pieces, and started to work. They quickly controlled the bar fire.
Suddenly all were aware of intense fire overhead. Several firefighters were badly injured and two died of burns.
Lessons Learned and Relearned
The standpipe is a fire department tool that is just as important as your new 2,500-gallon pumper (which has every “improvement” except a unisex rest room). I urge you to delay no further and order right now a check on all standpipe outlets to be sure that they fit fire department thread.
My July 1996 Preplanning Building Hazards column showed a picture of a standpipe outlet not located in a stairway, told of the hazard to firefighters, and suggested that a lifeline be extended from the outlet to the exterior. In this fire, one firefighter apparently followed the line back to the outlet, which still left him in a hazardous location. He apparently couldn`t find the stairway and, unfortunately, went back into the fire area, where he was found dead after the fire had been extinguished and his absence was noticed.
Fire departments that have such disastrous buildings in their area should make a special effort to preplan them adequately and ride herd on any code provisions that can be enforced (see BCFS3, pages 451-458).
A common error is to divide buildings neatly into five classes of construction (it makes for neat promotion exam questions, but builders and “improvers” never heard of these neat five classes). Each building is an individual problem.
The building had glued-up combustible acoustical tile concealed above a combustible suspended ceiling, provided in a subsequent remodeling. Such situations are extremely hazardous (BCFS3, page 389).
As part of the preplan, perhaps truck companies could be specifically assigned to a “void sector” to determine the situation with respect to overhead voids. Tactics might include big lines with open bore tips to blow the void out of existence. After the Johnson City, Tennessee, high-rise fire in which 18 occupants died in a fire fed by concealed combustible ceiling tile, the Bureau of Standards (now NIST) reported that the CO generation in such voids can be 50 times higher than the usual rate.
I would create a focus group to study the very hazardous buildings to develop adequate individual scenarios and preplans. The task may well be beyond the capability of a company officer, particularly one whose knowledge consists only of basic tactics. If the situation is truly bad and, in particular, if the lives of occupants are seriously threatened, it would be well to make the scenario available to city officials and the management of the building.
If a serious fire occurs, the politicians, owners, and newspapers will be deprived of the opportunity to say, “If the fire department had only told us of this potential disaster, we would have ….” It might even help to cause the judge to grant a motion to dismiss the fire chief as a defendant in a future lawsuit.
I believe that an adequate preplan would have considered the furniture fire load, noted well the thin plywood wall paneling and the concealed glued-up combustible tile ceiling, and concluded that the initial attack might better be made with a 212-inch line, perhaps with a stacked tip with a removable small-orifice tip to limit water flow if desired. Do your preplans consider fire growth (flame spread) and fire load? Are you familiar with the term “rate of heat release”? (BCFS3, Chapter 9 and pages 30-31)
Report Recommendations
The report contains several excellent recommendations. I have room here only for the headings. There is some excellent “thinking” in the full text of the recommendations:
1. Fire departments have a vested interest in code enforcement.
2. An incident command system should be routinely (emphasis supplied) used by every fire department.
3. Firefighter accountability must be one of the principal functions of an incident command system.
4. Communications equipment and systems–especially the radio–need to be redesigned for firefighting service.
5. Dangerous and complex buildings, such as those with multiple mixed uses, high-rises, and places of assembly, demand an immediate commitment of additional personnel and resources.
6. Communication systems: Radio operators and command personnel must be thoroughly familiar with equipment and procedures.
7. Prefire plans should be prepared for all high-rise buildings and other target hazards.
8. All departments should purchase and issue personal alert safety system (PASS) devices, and all fireground personnel should be required to use them.
9. Every fire department should adopt procedures for conducting investigations of serious firefighter injuries and line-of-duty deaths and developing critiques of significant incidents.
Again, I urge you to get and study the whole report and to act on it to revise current procedures.
STEEL IS A THERMOPLASTIC KILLER
On page 230 of BCFS3 is shown an apartment house with a large steel beam holding up a substantial load. I point out that a fire might cause it to fail. I have been told that such a beam failed in a fire in Fayette County, Georgia, and cost a firefighter his life. We simply cannot rely on experience. We must become more competent at recognizing death traps before they spring.
NFPA “ALERT BULLETIN”
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has issued an “Alert Bulletin” on three wood truss fatalities.
Unfortunately, the bulletin reports 17 wood truss fatalities vs. one steel truss fatality during the period of 1977 to 1995. This might unintentionally serve to dismiss cautions about steel trusses. The lightweight steel truss is common in many theaters and other clear-span buildings.
Thirteen firefighters died in Brockton, Massachusetts, in the late 1940s. The firefighters were fighting an “attic fire” when the truss failed. Steel is very strong, and steel truss members not much larger than bed rails can carry huge loads.
I recently received a welcomed letter from Chief David L. Parr of the Town of Wakefield, Massachusetts. They had learned well the lesson of the Brockton tragedy.
The stage was set for another such disaster, but this time Command was very alert to the hazard and evacuated the building in timely fashion.
The fire was in a 102-year-old, 312-story ordinary commercial Odd Fellows Hall. Preplanning had disclosed that two large lightweight steel trusses–running from front to rear–were in the cockloft.
Responding units found fire on the rear of the second floor and heavy smoke and heat on the third floor. An aggressive interior attack was initiated, but “all sector and division commanders were ordered to monitor the attic and report any fire in the cockloft to Command. Simultaneously the roof sector, rear sector, and two interior divisions reported fire in the cockloft. The building was immediately evacuated, and a heavy exterior defensive attack was undertaken. Shortly after, one truss collapsed, dropping the roof into the third floor. A massive fireball extended 40 to 50 feet into the sky.”
The letter closes: “I would like to thank you for your efforts over the years to educate the fire service in building construction and the hazards of truss roof construction. It is this knowledge that clearly averted a tragedy.”
Wouldn`t it be great to have a similar letter for every column?
In the 1970s, four firefighters died in the collapse of a steel bowstring truss in Wichita, Kansas.
Six Dallas, Texas, firefighters were pitched into a fire when elongating bar joists pushed down a concrete block wall. Fortunately, they were at the edge of the roof and could be recovered rapidly. Two fire officers in the Midwest barely escaped a bar-joist collapse. One was about to step onto the roof when it went in. The other, concerned about the trusses, withdrew his unit just in time.
In both the preceding cases, the insulated metal deck roof was on fire. (If you don`t understand this, see BCFS3, pages 302-309.) It is impossible to vent a metal deck roof. Tests showed that a six-square-foot vent would be required in a building only 20 feet wide in which only the roof was on fire.
Huge steel trusses in Chicago`s McCormack Place fire were destroyed by a huge fire load of combustible contents. Fortunately, the hydrants were shut off, and entry was providentially delayed.
The Wood Truss Fires
A well-written account of two fatalities is “Two Firefighters Fall in Chesapeake,” Curtis S.D. Massey (Fire Engineering, August 1996). If you haven`t copied this article and used it in classes, you are making a serious mistake.
The other fatality occurred in Branford, Connecticut. A triangular roof truss collapsed in a commercial fire. Personnel were ordered out as soon as it was noted that the fire was in the overhead. The trusses collapsed before all got out. A volunteer firefighter had entered the building alone and was not missed initially.
Firefighters should not be on or under a burning truss roof
You should know where buildings with truss roofs are located in your area. If a fire occurs and life is not involved, Command should determine if fire is in the trusses before entry is made.
The building is your enemy. Charging headlong into a potential disaster is similar to the “Charge of the Light Brigade.” I`m sure some would object to this “wimpy” procedure. Perhaps they could be organized into a corps to tell grieving widows and children that the sacrifice of their husband or father was in the “best tradition of the fire service.” n
Endnotes
1. Reference: “Without Warning,” John Vahey, district chief of the Boston (MA) Fire Department; published by the Boston Sparks Association.
2. I was particularly saddened by this tragedy because in the 1940s I made many excursions to Boston to ride with Rescue 3 out of the long-gone “big house” in Bowdoin Square. I also served with many great Boston firefighters in the Navy Firefighting School program.
3. Mark Chubb was then with Tri Data Corporation. He is currently the fire protection coordinator of the Southern Building Code Congress International. The report is available without charge from the U.S. Fire Administration; 16825 S. Seton Avenue; Emmitsburg, MD 21727. I urge you to send for a copy. This summary cannot cover all the details.
4. Brannigan, V. “Record of Appellate Court Cases on Retrospective Fire Codes.” Fire Journal, Nov. 1981, page 62. Also see Brannigan, V., JD, “Applying New Laws to Existing Buildings: Retrospective Fire Safety Codes.” Journal of Urban Law, 60:3, Spring 1983.
FRANCIS L. BRANNIGAN, SFPE, a 55-year veteran of the fire service, began his fire service career as a naval firefighting officer in World War II. He`s best known for his seminars and writing on firefighter safety and for his book Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition, published by the National Fire Protection Association. Brannigan is an editorial advisory board member of Fire Engineering.
