BY JAMES M. FOLEY
After September 11, 2001, and the continued threats of terrorism, it is hard to believe that the fire and emergency services continue to be the subject of budget cutting across the country. Fire departments are required to deliver greater levels of service with dwindling resources. When you begin to couple this reality with the changing face of construction codes, you begin to see the recipe for future disasters. As cities demolish older structures and revitalize with modern construction, there is a general belief that these new buildings offer greater fire safety than their predecessors and, therefore, fire services may be reduced. The reality, however, is that many of the new construction methods and valued cost engineering are building new disasters for the future firefighters of America.
An example of such a building failure occurred in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on March 21, 2003. The fire occurred in a residential neighborhood of relatively newly constructed attached single-family homes. The fire building was at 27 Windjammer Court. These two-story townhouses were built in 1990 under the New Jersey Uniform Construction Code (UCC). The UCC uses a state-modified version of the 1987 Building Officials and Code Administrators (BOCA) National Building Code. The homes were specified as use group R-3, single-family residential and were built to Type 5A (protected frame construction). The homes were factory-built modules trucked to the site, where they were assembled and finished. We discovered through the course of the investigation that some of these techniques contributed to the fire spread.
The fire began in a pot on a stove. Five members of the family, including two children, were home. The fire spread from the stove top into the kitchen cabinets and across the ceiling into heater vents that penetrated the ceiling. As the heat built up, the rear windows broke and the fire passed into a two-foot cornice that ran along the rear of the property. The fire was reported to the alarm center at 0050 hours. Fire department units arrived at 0055 hours.
Atlantic City Fire Department (ACFD) Battalion 1 Chief John Johnson reported a working fire with heavy smoke issuing from 27 Windjammer Court. Chief Johnson was immediately confronted with a report of a woman trapped in the structure. He issued assignments to Engine 7, Engine 1, and Ladder 1 and then attempted to enter the structure to effect the rescue. High heat and flames pushed him back; Engine 7 and Ladder 1 conducted the search under the protection of handlines. By this time, the fire had gained considerable headway and had already spread to 25 and 29 Windjammer Court. Chief Johnson requested a second-alarm assignment and a recall of Division 4 personnel to staff reserve engines.
Within minutes of entering the home, Ladder 1 members located the missing victim on the second floor in a bedroom. The victim, however, did not survive the fire. Additional companies and support units—including the Fire/ Arson Unit, FM-1 the fire official, and the county prosecutors Arson Unit—were requested. In Atlantic City, the county must be notified in all fire fatalities. The fire was very stubborn and kept reigniting and spreading in concealed spaces throughout the structures. The fire officers said the fire just wouldn’t go out. The fire was brought under control at 0228 hours, but it had critically damaged Numbers 25, 27, 29, and 31 Windjammer Court through extension.
 (1) Rear of 27 Windjammer Court. The fire began in the kitchen (arrow). (Photos by author.) |
null
 (2) Polyurethane foam used to adhere drywall to ceiling joists. |
null
THE INVESTIGATION
On arrival at the scene, I spoke with the incident commander and met with the Fire Investigation Team, which consisted of Fire Investigator Thomas Bell and Atlan-tic City Police Department Arson Inves-tigator Richard Johnson, brother of the ACFD Battalion 1 chief. As they began interviewing witnesses and taking statements from the family members, I entered 25 Windjammer Court to begin to get a feel for the buildings’ layout and construction. As I was examining the heater closet in the living room, I noticed a glowing ember in the upper corner of the closet. As I turned my back, I heard a “woof” sound. I turned around and saw that the ember was now a flaming fire running along the ceiling joist. By the time I went to the front door to get Engine 7 with a handline, the fire had grown considerably. This type of cat-and-mouse firefighting continued for 21/2 hours, when the fire was finally extinguished.
The city and county arson units concurred that the fire resulted from a pot left on the stovetop. The stove burner was in the “on” position, and the remains of the aluminum pot remained in the bottom of the burner. The new modern building materials used to construct the building contributed to the fire’s growth, development, and spread. The investigators determined that the fire was spread from the kitchen compartment into a combustible concealed space, where it fed on insulation paper, PVC wire covering, and sprayed-on poly-urethane expansion foam.
It is a standard engineering practice in factory-built housing to use polyurethane expandable foam to adhere the ceiling drywall to the ceiling joists. This foam runs the length of each joist on both sides and extends outward on average 11/2 inches. It was this foam that produced the “woof” sound I heard and that extended the fire to the concealed spaces and attics.
I would like to point out that this is a code-compliant foam application, according to BOCA research reports. As the fire moved through the home, consuming plastics and producing high rates of heat release, the vinyl windows and glass failed, allowing the flames to reach the building’s outside surface. The fire extended along the vinyl siding and entered the aluminum soffit materials easily, bypassing the two-hour fire walls between the dwelling units. A close examination of the internal fire walls found that they were properly installed and complied with both UL and ASTM standards for a fire resistance rating of two hours. The walls remained intact in all three structures and were load-bearing assemblies.
By fire department accounts, the fire was already in both 27 and 29 Windjammer Court on its arrival and extended to the rear of 25 Windjammer minutes after the fire attack began. This means that the two-hour fire walls were bypassed within three to four minutes of the fire’s venting the first-floor compartments. The fire walls, which were protected four feet out by fire resistant dry wall, terminated at the bottom side of the roof. This did not deter the fire from attacking and destroying the roof systems. In fact, the roof damage on the exposure building at 29 Windjammer was greater than that in the fire building.
Another contributing factor was the lightweight-truss articulated roof system. The roof was a combination of nominal lumber that also used premanufactured trusses and articulated galvanized hinges to lower the roof during truck transportation. During the fire, these articulated joints and truss gusset plates failed and popped from their securing positions. The investigators also uncovered a secondary fire issue at the electric utility panel in the single-car garages. The electrical feeds entered the building underground and surfaced in the garage in a three-inch PVC conduit. The heat of the fire easily melted and charred the conduit, causing a direct short of the service and igniting a secondary fire in combustibles near the electrical panel.
 (3) Concealed ceiling spaces between premanufactured modules. |
null
 (4) Four-foot fire-resistant protection on either side of the fire wall at the roof level. Note that the roof supports have burned away. |
null
 (5) Failed articulated joints and gussets at 29 Windjammer Court. |
null
THE AFTERMATH AND LESSONS LEARNED
The public severely criticized the fire department in connection with this fire. The source of the criticism was that the firefighters had a difficult time entering and extinguishing the fire in the structure. Public sentiment was exacerbated by the fire fatality. As witnesses watched the fire extend and grow from 27 Windjammer to the surrounding building, their perception of time slowed. The neighbors believed the fire department’s response was slow, even though alarm notification records from the city dispatcher and the New Jersey State Police PSAP for cell calls indicate that fire department companies were on the scene and operating within five minutes of the calls. Citizens also believed that firefighters were not putting the fire out properly. This perception was created by the continuous ember rekindles in the concealed building spaces containing the flammable foam. The firefighters appeared to be the bad guys when in reality the difficult firefight was caused by the modern methods of construction and the materials permitted under our building codes.
It is evident to me as a fire prevention official that defend-in-place concepts of fire protection traditionally relied on in closely built construction failed miserably in this fire. What good is a properly constructed fire wall if it fails to contain the fire for even a reasonable period of time? Modern construction methods use lightweight flammable materials in siding and trim, which contribute to autoextension and exterior fire spread. Also, the use of poly-urethane foam in ceilings, attics, and concealed spaces contributed to the fire spread and added to the difficulty of extinguishing this fire.
The fire department learned several valuable lessons, listed below, that need to be echoed in the fire service community:
- Preplan all buildings, and know the types of construction methods employed in your jurisdiction. Encourage firefighters to visit construction sites to view these methods.
- Encourage occupants to be aware of general fire safety conditions in new buildings. Just because a building is new doesn’t make it safer.
- Advocate in single-family dwellings, especially in attached multifamily configurations, the installation of sprinkler systems as described in National Fire Protection Associa-tion (NFPA) 13R, Installation of Sprinkler Systems in Residential Occupancies Up To and Including Four Stories in Height, 2002, and NFPA 13D, Installation of Sprinkler Systems in One- and Two-Family Dwellings and Manufactured Homes, 2002.
- Encourage city managers and mayors to allow fire service members to actively participate in the code process. The building material manufacturers and building trades always have a seat at the code development table, but the fire service is generally sparsely represented.
- Continue to question building materials and construction methods that contribute to rapid fire spread. Firefighters are the community fire experts and need to question construction methods that may lead to such conditions.
- Work with your community relations and public education personnel to make citizens aware of the dangers of rapid fire spread and how it affects firefighting abilities.
- There is a need to review the adequacy of the fire wall construction requirements in our building codes. This fire shows that a properly constructed fire wall can still be compromised.
The fire service has a vested interest in building construction and will pay with firefighters’ lives if we don’t begin to actively participate in the code process. Fire chiefs and fire prevention officials need to support proactive fire safety if we are to eliminate tomorrow’s disasters.
JAMES M. FOLEY, a 33-year veteran of the fire service, is deputy chief fire official in the Atlantic City (NJ) Fire Department, a leader of the New Jersey Task Force 1 Urban Search and Rescue Team, and a certified Fire Instructor II. He teaches in the fire code programs at Rutgers University and Camden County College. He has a bachelor of science degree in fire protection technology and fire administration from the University of Maryland and a bachelor of arts degree in biological science and chemistry from Rowan University.
