BY FRANCIS L. BRANNIGAN, SFPE (FELLOW)
A reader asked the difference between a cockloft and an attic.
A cockloft is a small space created when the roof is raised above the level of the flat beams to provide a pitch to drain rain and a vented air space to reduce top-floor temperatures. This is called an “inverted roof.” In row buildings, it is often the case that while brick nogging might have been used in a naïve attempt at a fire barrier, the cockloft is continuously open from building to building.1
I have argued not very successfully that such row buildings be regarded as just one building-the way the fire “sees” the building. However, designating the individual units as exposures has practical advantages in designating locations where crews should operate.
Attics. An attic is created when a steep pitched roof is built to shed snow or heavy rain loads, or for appearance. The attic is usually high enough for storage and may even be used for living space, particularly when dormer windows are provided.
If triangular trusses are used, the space is useless except for installing HVAC (heating, ventilating, air-conditioning) systems, which can fall as connections burn out even before the trusses collapse, such as happened in Louisville, Kentucky.
Dormer windows do not necessarily mean rafters, but parallel chord wood trusses used as rafters, which create a cockloft that is open under the entire roof. Use the thermal imaging camera to determine if fire is in the cockloft.
In the first edition (1971) of Building Construction for the Fire Service, I wrote on page 87: “If there are enough heat and fire to require ventilation, the roof is unsafe. Firemen ventilating the roof should be supported independently of the roof. Trussed roofs may well justify an aerial platform, even though there are no tall buildings.” Unfortunately, my crystal ball was tarnished: I did not add, “No firefighters should be under burning trusses.”
Pitched roofs are architecturally more desirable than flat roofs. Pitched roofs have been erected on flat roofs to improve appearance or to control leaks in the flat roof.2
All rain roofs and added peaked roofs should be noted in preplans because they make conventional venting impossible and dangerous.
Six Fire Department of New York firefighters died when a rain roof on a supermarket they were venting collapsed.
An engineer showed me an attic room for his mother-in-law. Batt insulation was installed between the rafters. There was an ashtray full of cigarettes on the table. He was astonished when I told him that the exposed paper vapor seal on the batt was a high flame spread hazard and that any ignition would spread over the entire surface in seconds.
Tom Brennan and I simultaneously used the word “truss loft” to describe the newly developed, what I call, “designer-provided fire assist (DPFA)”-the continuous void between floors of trussed buildings that is often connected to other truss lofts by utility openings. This makes it possible for fire to spread uncontrollably through the hidden voids, impervious to residential type partial sprinkler systems, which do not cover voids.
Structurally, a building may be platform frame, but with trussed or wooden I-beam floors, from our point of view, it has the fire characteristics of balloon frame. Wooden I-beams do not act as fire stops as sawn beams do because they can have large holes for air ducts. These holes are provided in the design as punch-outs.
RESIDENTIAL SPRINKLERS
I understand the value of the residential sprinkler systems (NFPA 13R, 13D) in the life safety of occupants, but we must be aware that they are not intended to protect, and will not protect, the building from fire in the voids.3
EMS CALLS PRESENT OPPORTUNITY FOR DETECTING HAZARDS
Captain Randy Higgins, Arlington County (VA) Fire Department, Station 3, discovered the following potential hazard while running a medical call at this house (see photo below). The home, located in Station 3’s first-due area, is more than 100 years old. It sits back off the road one-quarter mile and has very limited access. The lone occupant is an 80-year-old woman.
The photo shows a balcony on side C that leads from the master bedroom on the second floor. The four cantilevered wooden supports are completely rotted. If a firefighter were to attempt to enter or exit using this balcony, it would collapse from the weight. Higgins recommends that, whenever possible, responders conduct a walk-around while on a medical call at private dwellings to develop a preplan of the building to help ensure firefighter safety on future calls.
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The U.S. Constitution makes it difficult to make routine inspections of residences, but a medical call may present the opportunity to observe dangerous conditions. Information on such conditions not only should be distributed to firefighters but, as Captain Higgins did, should be reported to the appropriate local authorities and possibly to a relative of the occupant, if such information is available from the patient-or perhaps the phone number is on the wall. You do not want to be in the position, should something happen, of having been aware of the hazard and doing nothing about it. Dedicated EMS personnel could be trained in recognizing potential hazards.
As always, I urge that a system be established so that hazards like this one can be announced as part of the dispatch.
When I was in the Navy, I never heard, “Don’t give up the ship,” but I did learn that “There is always someone who didn’t get THE WORD.” I give you a Navy derisive couplet: Do not let it be applied to you:
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
When a 21⁄2-inch hoseline burst at my Panama Navy Shipboard Firefighting School during a demonstration for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, I calmly said, “That often happens at fires; the men are trained to recover.” My calm attitude convinced the captain that it was staged. I protested. He was unconvinced and said, “That’s what I like in my officers: initiative and ingenuity. “ I saluted and “confessed.” My next fitness report was top grade (rare for a reserve), and the magic words were included. ■
Endnotes
1. See “Row Frame Buildings,” Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition (BCFS3), 126.
2. See BCFS3 page 554 for a fire story.
3. I sprinklered much of the house in which we raised our family with copper pipe and 1⁄2-inch heads fed off the domestic system. A very noisy water meter was next to our bedroom; it would have done duty as a water flow alarm if a head had operated.
■ FRANCIS L. BRANNIGAN, SFPE (Fellow), the recipient of Fire Engineering’s first Lifetime Achievement Award, has devoted more than half of his 63-year career to the safety of firefighters in building fires. He is well known as the author of Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition (National Fire Protection Association, 1992) and for his lectures and videotapes. Brannigan is an editorial advisory board member of Fire Engineering.
V-J DAY CELEBRATION PREPLAN
This month, we celebrate V-J Day. In 1945, I was a full lieutenant in the Navy assigned as assistant fire protection manager of the Fifth Naval District headquartered at Norfolk, Virginia. We were told that President Truman would announce the victory at 7 p.m. We had several hundred fire alarm boxes on this huge Navy complex. We anticipated a rash of false alarms. There was no radio on fire apparatus, only in the four cars used by senior staff. We divided the base into four sectors and planned to answer alarms in our assigned areas to see if the alarm was real and then radio for a response.
I left home for my assigned sector as the President was beginning his announcement. Something we never anticipated was that all the ships in the area would empty their pyrotechnics lockers like a huge Fourth of July. I decided to go red light and siren. As I passed a Norfolk City fire station, the deputy chief standing in the doorway said, “Wow! The war is over two minutes, and there goes Frank in to resign.”
In fact, I was converted from officer to civilian status and remained until I joined the Atomic Energy Commission in 1949.
