Twenty-nine people are dead and scores were badly burned or trampled in the rush to escape a fire at a theater in a small Egyptian town . The show had paper scenery and multiple candles. A candle touched the scenery resulting in the theatre becoming an inferno. One of the two exits had been concealed by paper. Halloween celebration often include haunted houses. Be proactive when educating sponsors about hazards involved with these attractions. When you get by Halloween safely, start on Christmas hazards
Some Hazards
One of history’s deadliest fires occurred in 1859 in a cathedral in Chile. The overhead was decorated with fabric to resemble clouds. A fire broke out and about 2,000 people were killed.
Closer to home are fatal fires that have occurred when well meaning adults create a Halloween haunted house. Often cotton sheeting is used, which has a high flame spread, making it dangerous to use in close proximity to light bulbs (a 100-watt bulb can and did ignite cotton) or candles. Only low-energy electric candles should be permitted. One man lost his life assembling a haunted house in a school in Virginia when cotton sheeting was ignited by a light bulb. The disaster would have been much worse had it occurred when the children were in the haunted house. The presence of the old combustible tile ceiling above the later-installed non-combustible ceiling was also significant in the spread of the fire.”
Students in a fire-resistive girl’s dormitory at Providence College (RI) had a contest with cash prizes for attractive Christmas decorations. Evergreen trees, made of paper and cotton applied with masking tape, provided continuous fuel along the length of the dormitory corridor. Even fire alarm boxes were covered. Individual rooms were similarly decorated. Ten students died when a room fire extended through the hall.
Newspaper photos showed a teacher stapling paper showing the periodic table of the elements to the ceiling, proving that well-meaning, innovative people can unwittingly set up dangerous conditions.
A small counter-type restaurant in New York had plastic imitation wooden beams and plastic imitation fruit on the ceiling. A fire started in the restaurant. Responding firefighters reported that flames were shooting across the wide avenue.
A fire in the Six Flags Haunted House in New Jersey, in which eight people died, was reported to have been caused by a visitor touching a lighter to a polyurethane surface. The NFPA report on this fire is must reading. The extreme hazard of foamed polyurethane often goes unrecognized.
Another instance of ignited polyurethane killed 50 young people in a dance hall in Dublin Ireland when an individual toughed his lighter to exposed polyurethane. Foamed polyurethane is sometime used to create decorations. Samples of this foam ignited after a one-second application of flame from a butane lighter.
Many people think fiberglass is noncombustible. It ignites and burns readily. In the recent Rhode Island night club tragedy, fireworks ignited combustible packing material which had been used for sound conditioning.
It is difficult to get some people to take precautions with Christmas trees but at least do your best to control their use, particularly in places of assembly including churches. See Chapter 9, Fire Growth, of Building Construction For The Fire Service Third Edition for comprehensive information on this subject.
Copy this item and distribute it wherever you think good-hearted but uninformed people will be doing decorations
Francis L (Frank)Brannigan ,SFPE (Fellow) a fire ground IC from1942-49 is a 63 year veteran of all phases of fire protection. He received the first Fire Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award. He writes two alternate monthly columns in Fire Engineering: The Ol Professor and Preplanning Building Hazards. Brannigan is a member of Fire Engineering‘s editorial advisory board. He is the Author of Building Construction For The Fire Service now in its third edition.
