The Mything Link in Fire Protection
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FIRE PROTECTION
Trying to persuade someone to adopt your point of view is tough enough, but trying to persuade someone who firmly believes a contrary myth is nearly impossible. And the fire protection field is fraught with myths. Some are believed only by civilians, the truth being understood by firefighters; others are believed by both civilians and firefighters, the fallacy of a few being the focus of this article.
BUILDING/FIRE PROTECTION CODES
If a structure was built to the latest code, it shouldn’t have any problems. Right? Wrong.
Codes, in effect, represent written compromises between opposing viewpoints (you can install fewer exits if you have the building sprinklered); and at least some code provisions are inspired by influence exerted on and economic interests of code-making authorities.
Codes are voted on in meetings at various levels and subjected to the political process in all its ramifications. It is not inaccurate to say that codes are political rather than technical documents, and, as such, are often technically deficient. Chicago’s McCormick Place (a huge exhibition hall that suffered a $154-million fire loss in 1967) and subsequent UL (Underwriters Laboratories) tests showed the fallacy of the concept that structural steel 25 to 30 feet above the floor does not need fire protection.
Structural steel in the new McCormick Place is protected with directly applied fireproofing delivering one-hour fire resistance. However, despite experience, many codes still permit the installation of unprotected structural steel 25 to 30 feet above the floor.
How much combustible material does your code permit in a designated “non-combustible” building? Does it permit a combustible metal deck roof? A huge wooden balcony? Combustible sheathing? If so, the building is most assuredly subject to destruction independent of the contents.
When writing codes, writers usually have specific, rather simple buildings in mind. And often the completed building far exceeds any expectation of the code writers.
Codes leave interpretation to the “authority having jurisdiction,” a practice easily open to abuse. Economic “necessity,” or more often desire, can hardly be justified as a reason for a variance, but there is no adequate documentation of variances and exceptions granted.
Code enforcement too can be a real problem. According to published reports, Fairfax County, VA, admitted that the average inspection time per structure is 10 minutes.
It’s also important to understand that while the building or fire code may produce a fire resistive building, this is no guarantee that a particular business will survive the fire or the firefighting efforts. The United Stated Government lost, by fire, the service records of thousands, if not millions, of service men and women in a fire resistive records repository. Press reports told of one ex-soldier being dragged off to jail by MPs for being AWOL (which he wasn’t) because his records had been destroyed.
INSURANCE COMPANIES
The insurance company has no problem with this building, why should the fire department be concerned about it?
Fire insurance companies insure the property against loss by fire. Any hazard to life safety is of no professional concern to the underwriter.
Insurance companies pool and insure risks. The key word is pool. As long as an insurance company can acquire sufficient risks in a given class and figure the premium correctly to cover losses, the cost of doing business, and make a profit, all is well. Since losses are already anticipated, it makes no difference which property is lost. Like a slot machine casino, the insurance company knows there will be payouts.
Insurance companies can lose money on underwriting and still be profitable. The profits come from investing the premium income. Insurance companies can lose money on underwriting but make it up in the stock market.
Recently, however, some comparties have come on hard times. Competition has forced down the premium income, and in several cases caused companies to write poorer risks than their standards normally permit. The investment return has not been sufficient to overcome the underwriting losses.
The “bottom line” is that losses are necessary to the insurance business, and even “selective” companies will insure a “dog” if enough good risks are wrapped in the “package.”
FIRE RECORDS
“We have an excellent fire record,” is what we often hear from industrial or commercial operations having an organized safety program. Usually a fire program is part of the safety program—and rarely does the plant’s safety director appreciate the difference between safety and fire statistics.
Accidents are measured by two yardsticks, frequency and severity. The frequency rate is the total number of accidents compared to the total number of hours worked. Severity measures the number of days lost due to the accident.
Such measures have no relationship at all to potential fire losses. In 1969, the Atomic Energy Commission’s Rocky Flat’s plant at Golden, CO, had gone over 25-million man-hours without a disabling injury when it suffered one of the biggest fire losses in United States history.
Major fires are one-time disasters. Usually a number of factors that have existed for years are brought together just right and the disaster occurs. The ramp bringing the Clyde Beatty Lions and Tigers to their performing cage in the circus tent had been erected across the main exit “for only 10 minutes” scores of times. In Hartford, CT, in 1944, a fire started in the tent. One-hundred sixty-eight people could not get out.
An all too common practice is to turn off sprinklers, installed for life safety, when doing maintenance and repairs while the building is occupied. The experience is not too bad, but the potential is disastrous.
In 1976, the New York City Fire Department received a largely ignored warning that all the sprinklers in Macy’s, a huge department store, were out of service. They were shut down the day before the multiple-alarm fire in which 12 people, including a firefighter, lost their lives.
How many warnings does the fire service need before the rigid policy of evacuating a building if the sprinklers installed for life safety are shut off is enacted? Not many buildings will be evacuated. The work will be done on more costly overtime.
Fire risks must be judged on potential, not on experience. An analogy: The United States has never fought a war with Russia. Our experience is excellent.
SPRINKLERS
Sprinklers drown the whole building! Don’t they?
When I was in college, a fellow student described an alleged prank. He said that he had put his lighter to a sprinkler head, causing all the heads to go off and flooded the building. I told him and his audience that he was b.s.ing.
Twenty years later I met him. He is now an Air Force colonel in command of an airbase in Japan. I’m sure they’ve showed him a deluge system in a hangar. So now he “knows” he was right.
Many people think a sprinkler system operates like a deluge system. Few, including firefighters, have any idea of how much fire it takes to actually set off a head.
After the Byer Museum of the Arts in Evanston, IL, was totally destroyed by fire, the acting director of another museum in Evanston was quoted as saying, “It is a questionable practice to have sprinklers in a museum. A sprinkler system could do more harm to an art collection than a fire, particularly if the fire were contained, or the sprinkler system malfunctioned.”
It is obvious that the myths of a sprinkler head operating like a deluge system and a wastebasket fire causing his entire business to be drowned underlie this man’s opinion—despite the fact that another unsprinklered museum was a total loss. Sprinkler piping is tested to far higher pressures than is domestic piping, which is all over the building without causing concern. Therefore, there is little chance of a sprinkler causing accidental damage. Also, the sprinkler system sends notification of a leak.
Deal positively with this specter of “instant operation.” Set up a demonstration. Put a sprinkler head on the end of a pipe and feed it by a garden hose. Hold the sprinkler over a good sized bonfire. Your audience will soon wonder when the head will activate. They will cheer when it finally pops. You are cheating a bit, of course. Because there is no ceiling heat barrier, most of the heat escapes.
Too honest to cheat? Set up a room that is open on one side. Install a sprinkler head. Start a good, fast-burning fire and ask, “What would you do with this fire? You have no choice of extinguishing agent, water is the only means. You can, however, choose your extinguishing method. The sprinkler puts the water on the fire at about 15 gallons per 100 square feet or so. Fire suppression forces must fight their way in with hose lines. Which way do you think the most water would be used?”
Believe me, demonstrations like these have converted some of the toughest sprinkler opponents.
HEAVY TIMBER
Heavy timber is slow burning.
True enough, I suppose, if you substitute long burning for slow burning.
The slow burning characteristic is only useful as long as the fire department can maintain an offensive operation. Once the building is involved to a substantial degree, heavy timber becomes a liability, not an asset. Once firefighters must evacuate the building and shift to a defensive operation, the value of “slow burning” vanishes. If a building is doomed by its construction deficiencies, the sooner the end comes, the better.
The slow burning characteristic may guarantee building stability. I say “may” because many “heavy timber” buildings have cast iron columns that are barely connected to the structure, or have unprotected steel or other features that make the building much less collapse resistant than a true “mill constructed” building.
