HIGH-TECH TRAINING: THE BERGEN COUNTY LIFE SAFETY COMPLEX
The ultimate challenge for fire serice instructors is to maximize safety, effectiveness, and scope while providing a live training environment that’s as close as possible to the real thing. To that end. the Bergen County (NJ) Police and Fire Academy sought to expand its fire training facilities with the finest technology available. The idea for the Life Safety Complex was born. The complex, scheduled for completion in 1992, will create fire scenarios in a wide variety of structures using a computerized propane fire simulator to control and monitor the fire environment.
Funding for the project was provided through a bonding ordinance. A copy of the architect’s rendering, a description, and sketches of the proposed building were sent to all fire instructors, fire chiefs, evaluators, advisors, and fire academies in New Jersey, as well as to some out-of-state facilities. A questionnaire designed to solicit input from a cross-section of the fire service community also was enclosed. Most responses were positive and contained suggestions that have been incorporated into the project— such as an area for confinedspace rescue, a sprinkler system to enhance the training of pump operators, and a standpipe system to simulate an operation on the third floor of a high-rise building. The only negative comment offered was that the project was “too busy” and that three buildings—-instead of one structureshould be built.
Armed with this vital information, we finalized building plans and worked on interior design and fire simulation. To help the architects thoroughly understand the principles of fire behavior and fire attack, we conducted a one-day workshop for them that included a three-hour session on fire behavior and a subsequent three-hour class on the direct, indirect, and combination approaches to attacking structural fires. After the classes, the professional consultants donned structural firefighting turnouts and SCBA and individually executed the indirect and combination attacks from the exterior of the burn building. Then they entered the building and applied the direct attack and overhaul principles.
The insight provided by this firsthand experience of what firefighters do when they are at structural fires— coupled with their excitement and exhaustion—enabled these professionals to design the Life Safety Complex with more understanding and enthusiasm. The building would be 80 feet x 80 feet and three stories high, would have a poured-in-place concrete construction, and would house 18 model occupancies commonly found in communities throughout the country: the hair salon, retail store, townhouse, dwelling, warehouse, grocery store, gas station, auto bodyshop, tenement, restaurant, luncheonette, forward command or staging area, professional office, hotel, highrise office, auditorium, movie theater, and basement space designed for nonhostile rescue situations.
Within seven minutes the complex’s smoke system will provide nontoxic smoke throughout the building, thereby forcing firefighters to use the kneeling search technique. In the event of an emergency, the smoke will be cleared by a sophisticated ventilation system capable of removing three floors of smoke within 60 seconds. A computer will control state-of-the-art propane fire simulators and monitor heat levels, generation of smoke, propane levels, and air within the building during exercises.
Each of the 30 rooms within the building will be connected by a communication system that allows instructors to talk with or listen to students. Instructors will use the audiocassette system provided to record students’ movements in each room or to play prerecorded messages of a baby’s cry, the hissing of a gas leak, or the crackle of a hidden fire.
SIDE A
The facility’s design provides opportunities for various contemporaryfire scenarios. The exposure A side of the building, for example, tests students’ knowledge of the tactics necessary for combating fires in taxpayer and townhouse-type occupancies. The propane fire simulation system provides the opportunity for putting out a small electrical panel fire that breaks out in the rear wall of the center store on the floor. This fire can be extinguished with a nonconducting extinguishing agent, or the firefighters could shut off the electrical current and use water. If the firefighters use water without shutting off the electrical main, an alarm will sound so that the instructor knows an improper extinguishing technique is being applied.
After firefighters extinguish the electrical fire, the instructor can have the fire extend up the wall and into the cockloft of the taxpayer if a fire extension check is not conducted. This provides firefighters with the experience of having to act quickly and decisively so that the fire in a hidden space above their heads does not spread. Should the firefighters fail to confine the fire before extinguishing it, the instructor could use the simulation system to extend the cockloft fire into adjacent stores. The scenario of having smoke in the cockloft areas and in the three stores provides a realistic portrayal of a Main Street U.S.A. firefighting experience. Should it become necessary, the instructor can control or stop the fire by pushing a button and the smoke will clear.
A typical 2 1/2-story townhouse with a spiral staircase leading to the bedroom on the second floor stands next to the taxpayer in the complex. The bed fire simulator installed in the room can function as part of the first floor taxpayer scenario or as a separate direct attack simulator. A fireplace flue passing through this room provides access to fuel plates that can be used for simulated chimney fires.
Numerous scenarios that teach students how to determine when to use the direct, indirect, or combination approach when fighting fires are built into the townhouse model. On the first floor a couch fire can start and quickly extend out of the window, giving the illusion from the exterior that the first floor is fully involved. A quick indirect attack from the exterior will cause the fire in the window to decrease and allow the firefighter to enter the first floor and directly attack the couch fire. If the interior attack is not made within 3 1/2 minutes after the exterior attack, the fire will flash out of the window again.
A bed on the second floor of the townhouse breaks into simulated fire. Firefighters on the first floor must access the fire; it is difficult to do since they must ascend a spiral staircase to attack die bed fire direcdy. The bed also will be used to simulate fires requiring a direct attack for firefighter I students.
On the second floor of exposure A is a restaurant containing a kitchen, coatroom, office, storage room, and seating area for customers; the restaurant is furnished with tables and chairs. The fire simulation extends from the cockloft below and up through the kitchen counter. Heat ducts in the exposure A wall provide convected heat to the restaurant when the cockloft fire simulator is in use. The smoke machines on this floor provide dense smoke, while the heat duct supplies heat from the front to the rear.
Adjacent to the restaurant is a typically furnished luncheonette equipped with a mechanism that can spread fire from the cockloft through a section of wall. Ducts on the front wall provide heat and a built-in machine produces smoke. The last occupant in the front of the second-floor story is the bedroom of the townhouse/dwelling unit.
SIDE B
The townhouse appears as a 2 1/2story dwelling on side B of the complex, representing a large portion of the townhouses in Bergen County. Students will attack the first floor couch fire and second floor bedroom fire described above from different access points. The dwelling unit includes an attic area that is accessible from the second-floor ceiling.
In the center of the B side, there is a typical high-rise stair tower equipped with a dry standpipe system that provides hoseline connections on each floor. The stair tower also makes positive-pressure ventilation demoastrations possible by permitting air to enter through the doorways that access any one of the three floors.
The last occupant on the B side is a warehouse with two actual loading docks. The warehouse has rack storage from left to right, and the right rear portion has a raised platform covering a 20 foot x 20 foot area; it is accessible from two sides by a threestep flight of stairs. In the center of the platform is a 5 foot x 7 foot fire simulator pan containing simulated 55-gallon drums that create the illusion of a flammable liquid fire that must be extinguished with foam.
SIDE C
When approaching the building from the C side, the warehouse is seen as a grocery store. The rack storage now runs from front to back (instead of from left to right) and represents the long aisles typical of a grocery store. The fire simulator located in the rear of the warehouse is the same as that which is in the left rear corner of the grocery store. The 55-gallon drums, however, have been removed and metal simulated cardboard boxes are on top of the simulator. These conditions now create the illusion of a class A fire that necessitates an attack with water.
The next occupant is an auto repair shop with a three-car garage, a small office, and gasoline pumps. This scenario is typical of the automobile fire that breaks out next to a gasoline pump. The garage is designed so that an automobile shell with straw can be burned; a simulator will be installed in the future. The garage space also can be used as a simulated carport that has one car afire and a nonburning car on each side—representing a common exposure problem.
SIDE D
The gasoline station becomes an auto body shop on side D of the building. Entrance from this side is through the shop office.
The last building front on side D is a three-story tenement that has an exterior fire escape connected to the second-floor restaurant and the thirdfloor hotel room and hallway. The fire escape provides secondary egress from the second and third floors of the building.
Directly over the warehouse/grocery store is a 40 foot x 40 foot room that can be used as a classroom or a forward command post and staging area for high-rise fire operations taking place on the third floor. The room is equipped with white vinyl boards for recording information and simulated elevator HVAC and communication panels commonly found in a high-rise fire command center. Firefighters on the third floor can communicate with this room or the safety control center simply by plugging the available telephone handsets into the wall outlets.
The last area on the second floor will simulate a typical professional office area that includes three offices, a conference room, and a reception area. There will be no fire in this occupancy; however, smoke will be provided as well as furnishings typical of the occupancy.
The front half of the third floor is a simulated high-rise that includes six hotel rooms with real balconies. An office area typically found on a floor in this type of occupancy is across the hall. Half-wall partitions in the office area provide a maze effect. The hotel rooms and office areas have artificial smoke and heat piped in from ducts. A sprinkler head supplied by a Siamese connection on the exterior of the building is installed in each of the six hotel rooms.
The roof of the building is designed to hold a class of 30 students. The perimeter has a parapet and safety railings. The roof will provide the perfect atmosphere for a ventilation class that will be enhanced by two raised platforms on which pallets can be fastened so that students can practice 4 foot x 4 foot roof ventilation or trench cut with saws. Smoke machines connected to the raised platforms will release smoke from the underside of the pallets as students chop or saw. Materials needed for cutting will be raised by an electriccrane installed on the roof, and cut-up wood and scraps will be dropped into a dumpster located next to the warehouse through a trash shoot attached to the building’s exterior.
A roof manifold, supplied by a Siamese connected on the exterior of the building, is ideal for exposure protection or a pump operators’ class. Four 50,000-cfm blowers, located on the roof, will exhaust all of the heat and smoke in the entire building in less than 60 seconds. Access to the roof is provided by a staircase on each end of the building. The staircase at the north end terminates on the roof; the one at the south goes to the third floor where there is a wall ladder that leads to the roof—providing another means of egress. Both staircases have dry standpipes. There is a 2 1/2-inch and 1 1/2-inch N.S.T. connection in the north stair tower and a 2 1/2-inch connection in the south stair tower. A 1 1/2inch hose cabinet is in the hallway on each floor.
No artificial smoke, heat, or fire will be in the basement of the building. An 80-foot confined space tunnel, accessible from two manhole covers on the first floor—one on the floor of the body shop office and the other on the loading dock of the warehouse—provides an area for firefighters and industry personnel to receive confinedspace rescue training. A high-rise electrical meter room with simulated meters and panels for shutting off electric current to the third-floor hotel also is located in the basement. The elevator shaft ends in the basement and can be used for simulated collapse programs.
Hallways in the building are 70 feet long and have an elevator shaft in the center and stair towers at each end. Although the elevator shaft will not have a working car, it will have steel grading as a floor and a railing system that is removable for repelling. The shaft opening will be closed with actual elevator doors that can be opened only with the emergency key.
Fire, smoke, and communication in the Life Safety Complex are controlled in a separate two-story 20 foot x 20 foot safety control building strategically located in the center of the existing training ground. The first floor of the building provides an area for medical storage, a compressor room for producing breathing air, and a restroom facility. Water fountains, shower heads, and a shaded area to be used as a rehab area during training ground evolutions will be on the exterior of the first floor. The second floor will consist of a 360-degree tinted glass view of the entire training ground, and it will house the controls and computers necessary to activate all the fire, smoke, and communication equipment in the Life Safety Complex.
The roof of the complex is being designed as a press area where reporters and guests can view or videotape training evolutions taking place within the facility.
Plans are being made to have firesimulation, smoke-production, and communication systems installed in the existing five-story training tower and the three-story burn building. Closed-circuit television monitoring of all interior rooms and blind exterior sections of all training buildings also is planned. All of these systems will be tied into the second floor.
