CHANGE THE CODE
Recently, the International Association of hire Chiefs organized a “Codes Council” to consider recommended code changes. Fire Engineering Consulting Editor Francis L. Brannigan, SFPE, author of Building Construction for the Fire Service, now in its third edition, submitted specific suggestions, which are discussed below. All the recommendations involve severe life hazards for firefighters and citizens and should be recognized by every fire officer. Adequate preplanning is a must.
Whenever a code change is suggested, the first question to arise is, “Where is the experience to justify this unnecessary, exorbitant expense for the builder?”
In a few cases, sad experience is available. For the other cases, I can offer no direct experience. I do not consider the lack of experience a valid argument for ignoring a real and present danger. Ben Franklin told us, “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.” In our field, experience is synonymous with blood, grief tears, and possibly huge dollar losses. These dollar losses are not a private matter. They are borne by all through the medium of insurance, a private taxing system.
The fire service must work harder to develop potential disaster scenarios for those situations where no experience is available. On some occasions, I have found such scenarios useful in my efforts to get the responsible authorities to take corrective actions. In the United States, we developed disaster scenarios for nuclear reactors and executed our designs accordingly; the result was Three Mile Island. The Russians waited for experience, and the outcome was Chernobyl.
In my conversations with code writers over the years, I have detected a consistent pattern of thought that says amending the code solves the problem. It does not. All the existing hazards remain, and even the most logical and simple change can meet opposition.
As an example, in 1980, Bert Vogel, then an engineer at the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) and now in private practice, was my supervisor when I, as a consultant, examined combustible multiple dwelling fires for the Bureau. He was impressed by my report, which described how, in several fires, the fire belched out a window and rode the “escalator” of the normal upward air current feeding the attic vents and engulfed the attic before there could be any effective suppression. Prince George’s County, Maryland, had amended its code to provide that vents not be placed directly over windows but to the side of the window at a minimum specified distance.
Vogel proposed at the 1980 meeting of Building Officials and Code Administrators International (BOCA) in Virginia Beach that BOCA’s code be changed to conform to that of Prince George’s County. He was soundly defeated. Fire officers at all levels should be aware of the hazards discussed here, which can affect firefighter and civilian safety, and should develop appropriate tactics.
CODE DEFICIENCIES
The following four code deficiencies have, or may, cost lives of occupants or firefighters.
Hidden combustible acoustical tile. Combustible acoustical tile became popular in the 1930s. As the flame-spread hazard of this tile and other fiberboard products became known, the building industry fought desperately to fend off any regulation. (I was there.) This attitude changed, however, after a manufacturer had to pay a huge settlement in connection with the 1949 St. Anthony’s Hospital fire in Effinghan. Illinois, in which 74 lives were lost due to the combustible acoustical tile. Today, almost all new acoustical tile installed commercially meets code requirements for flame spread. In many cases, however, the new code-approved tile was installed below the old combustible tile.
In the 1963 Roosevelt Hotel fire in Jacksonville, Florida. 22 people died. Smoke from a fire in the old-type acoustical tile hidden behind a newceiling in the ballroom reached upper floors through air ducts.
Old-tvpe hidden acoustical tile caused the loss of the lives of two firefighters in Wyoming, Michigan, in 1980.
Most recently, old-type hidden acoustical tile was a major factor in the loss of 16 lives in a fire-resistive senior citizens’ home in Johnson City, Tennessee.
Combustible tile generally was installed in two ways: It was glued to the ceiling above, or it was installed on a wooden structure erected above the old plaster ceiling.
The glue represents a substantial fire load. It was the key factor in the 16-fatality Hartford (CT) hospital fire in 1961. Just this year, a letter to the editor in a fire trade magazine related a story of the fierce ignition of blobs of glue that had been on a ceiling for more than 30 years.
The wooden structure below the plaster ceiling provides a void above the tile in which carbon monoxide accumulates; fire on the upper surface is not hit by hose streams. I once witnessed a backdraft explosion in a Silver Spring (MD) row of stores in which such a void was a factor.
No code requires removal of the old tile.
Recom mendations:
- Codes should require the removal of old combustible tile when new tile meeting flame-spread requirements is installed.
- Fire departments should examine buildings for the presence of hidden combustible tile.
- Prefire plans might include open bore stream attack on the new ceiling to expose the old ceiling; if possible, blow the old tiles down.1
Hidden unprotected steel columns. Prior to World War II, steel was the only material used for high-rise construction. The fact that heavy concrete fireproofing was required gave the steel industry no problem; it meant heavier steel.
After the war, the development of special steel-reinforcing rods made concrete high-rises possible. This competition led the steel industry to seek out lightweight assemblies that could pass the ASTM El 19 Fire Resistance Test. This effort led to the development of the floor/ceiling assembly, which combines bar joists with a concrete topping and acoustical tile into a “floor/ceiling assembly” that could pass the ASTM El 19 test.
Jim Spence of the American Iron and Steel Institute was a strong proponent of allowing unprotected columns in the plenum (void) space, based on the concept that the rated floor assembly would provide protection. This practice was permitted in many areas. The concept is seriously flawed. It is too easy for the tiles to be removed. A storeroom with its high fire load that is inaccessible to firefighters is a common place from which tiles are removed to be used as replacements elsewhere. A number of office building fires have shown that fire loads can be severe. A building column being heated enough to fail is a very credible possibility. The consequences of such an occurrence can only be imagined.
Spence sent me a copy of a test conducted at a gypsum company plant. An insurance company representative who viewed the test approved it but noted that it was acceptable for “one story or top floor only,” i.e., no multiple floors.
This practice is contrary to the clear warning contained in Fire Protection Through Modern Building Codes, published by the American Iron and Steel Institute (5th edition, p. 126) that columns should be protected for the full height of the building.
Recot n mendations:
- Change any code that permits this practice.
- Conduct detailed inspections of steel-framed buildings to discover if this hidden hazard exists so that tactics might be adjusted accordingly.
- Include in preplans immediate backup of typical small-capacity initial attack lines with heavier open-bore streams to get fast knockdown of the fire with special attention to cooling of unprotected steel. Disseminate such plans to owners, tenants, and insurance companies to fend oft’ future claims of unnecessary water damage and charges of incompetence by “hired-gun” experts.2
Wood-truss-supported exit stairs. In 1903 New York City completely overhauled its Tenement (apartment) House Code to provide a high degree of safety to occupants of combustible multiple dwellings. For more than 40 years, no lives were lost as a result of building conflagration in such buildings. One basic provision was that noncombustible exit stairways be enclosed in a masonry tower and that self-closing metal doors be provided for every apartment. The stairway thus became a place of refuge for occupants and a dependable working platform for firefighters.
Today’s truss and wooden I-beam floors present many hazards to occupants and firefighters. Recently, I have noted a practice that presents an extraordinary hazard to occupants and makes it possible to develop a scenario in which multiple occupants of an apartment house have no way out, except possibly over inadequate fire department ladder service: the practice of extending floor trusses out to form the platform of the stairway. This means that there is a common void between apartments and the stairway, usually separated only by a piece of gypsum board “buttered” into place at the wall line. This flimsy, untested barrier, moreover, may even be penetrated because the void is an ideal place to run cables and piping, including that for 13R sprinkler systems.
The fact that the trussed floors passed the ASTM El 19 fire resistance rating is not enough, since the test does not include fire burning down through the floor or entering the void laterally.
Recommendations:
- Require in the codes that at the very least the stairway be separated from the voids in these one-way-out buildings.
- Alert the political authorities with regard to where this hazard exists or is planned and to the possibility that increased ladder service for personnel may be needed.
- Teach the occupants of such buildings how to evacuate at the first indication of fire.
- Train firefighters with regard to the necessity of defending the stairway. possibly even at the expense of allowing the original fire to gain headway.3
Post-tensioned concrete buildings, under construction and in use. Posttensioned concrete structures under construction present the hazard of total collapse during a fire. One such collapse has occurred.
The exposed ends of tendons, which totally fail at 800°F, should be protected from fire. This is particularly important for large tendons, which support heavy loads and are tensioned in several increments.
Recommendations:
- Codes should require totally noncombustible form work and false work and forbid the use of individual liquefied petroleum gas bottles for heating. Fire chiefs should have a preconstruction conference with the builders of any concrete structure to develop procedures that w ill mitigate the possibility of collapse and, in any case, ensure that if a collapse occurs firefighters will not be victims. The fire department should be up to the minute on the status of tensioning of floors.4
In use, a post-tensioned building is a different structure forever. It is being held up by cables under tremendous tension. Using conventional tactics in opening floors might be disastrous. The National Association of Demolition Contractors has been unsuccessful in getting the Prestressed Concrete Institute or the American Institute of Architects interested in a system that will provide for the marking of such buildings permanently because of the special hazards they present during demolition. Fire is just another way to demolish a building.
Keep a permanent record of posttensioned concrete buildings, and instruct firefighters about the hazards of cutting an opening through tensioned floors.
In a collapse, be wary of any request for a cutting torch to cut “reinforcing steel.” Be sure the steel is conventional reinforcing steel and not highly stressed tendons.
Endnotes
1. Building Construction for the Fire Sendee, 3rd ed. (Quincy, Mass.: National Fire Protection Association), 1992, pp. 388-92, 417-23-
2. Ibid., pp. 294-98.
3. Ibid., pp. 538-41, 544-46.
4. Ibid., pp. 354-55.
5. Ibid., pp. 369-71.
