HOT TOPIC

HOT TOPIC

Let’s begin this month’s Hot Topic with the results of the June 1992 survey on burglar bars. Twenty people responded, with the following results:

1. Do the existing model building and fire code provisions handle the issue of burglar bars adequately? Yes 0 No 17
2. Should burglar bars be prohibited entirely? Yes 4 No 14
3. Are “push-button” magnetic releases acceptable? Yes 15 No 3
4. Is the addition of a smoke detector release (tied directly to the burglar bar) necessary? Yes 14 No 3
5. Should burglar bars be permitted only in fully sprinklered buildings? Yes 6 No 14
6. Should burglar bars be operable from the exterior of the building with the use of a fire department rapid entry type key? Yes 13 No 5
7. Do “fixed” (nonoperable) burglar bars greatly outnumber operable burglar bars in your jurisdiction? Yes 15 No 5

Thanks again for your participation.

Now an update on the refrigerated storage column from August 1991. A recent fire in a cold storage warehouse in San Antonio yielded some lessons on smoke removal in these buildings.

(Photos by author.)

While cleaning the floor of a frozen food warehouse, a propanepowered sweeper caught fire in an aisle. The fire spread to pallets of food on the adjacent racks next to the sweeper. The fire department was called quickly and responded from a firehouse a few blocks away.

Arriving firefighters quickly extinguished the fire, even before the preaction sprinkler system had a chance to operate. No sprinkler heads were fused (not even in-rack heads nearby), and the detection system did not receive an alarm condition.

Besides an icy floor, firefighters were faced with a fairly thick smoke condition in the warehouse. They cut a vent hole in the roof and directed positive-pressure ventilation units through exterior loading dock doors in an attempt to move the smoke out of the vent. This procedure proved unsuccessful. They could not force the nonbuoyant, very cold smoke out of the vent hole even with multiple PPV units in operation.

They then decided to “reverse” the operation—to force air in the vent hole and out of the loading dock doors. They took a PPV unit to the roof and set it up to blow air into the building. The “reverse” operation was successful. After several minutes, most of the smoke was removed from the building. The warehouse owner was given the tasks of removing the minor residual smoke from the building and awaiting the arrival of the health inspector, who had been requested by the fire department.

The search for new, more efficient, and readily available energy sources for automobiles has taken on a new dimension. Besides the “normal” fuels such as gasoline, diesel fuel, and propane, another material has been added—compressed natural gas.

Compressed natural gas already is being used by buses. Thus, it is only natural that automobiles be powered by this common material.

My office recently received a set of plans for a new single-family home. We normally don’t review singlefamily homes, but I wanted to see this one. I wanted to see the natural gas “fueling station” in the two-car garage.

Essentially, the two cars to be stored in the garage arc powered by natural gas. A compressor receives natural gas from the service piped to the house and subsequently “pumps” it through hoses attached to the vehicles’ natural gas tanks. A “fill up” usually takes several hours (overnight) because of the compressor’s limitations.

One compressor manufacturer indicates that a “quick-fill” system soon will be available. It appears that this rapid-fill system will use tanks to store the gas, similar in principle to a fire department’s SCBA cascade system.

What will they think of next?