BY FRANCIS L. BRANNIGAN, SFPE (FELLOW)
A Tech Hotel is a fortified windowless building containing switches, servers, routers, and computers for telecommunications and Web-hosting tenants. They are high-security structures.
Adam and Katherine Ivey Thiel presented an excellent exposition of the conditions in such buildings on page 123 of the October 2001 issue of Fire Engineering, which is “must read” for every fire chief. The owners of such buildings do not advertise the presence of these structures, and the chief of a small town may be in for a big surprise. I draw on my many years of experience in the Navy and on the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) for getting adequate property and life safety provisions into highly classified locations and those housing delicate electronic equipment to supplement their article.
I believe that these buildings can be deathtraps for firefighters. A traditional attack would have firefighters blundering around live electrical equipment in total darkness in tight spaces.
 Fire Department of New York Commemorative Edition, Fire Department Institute, New York, NY. Printed with permission. |
After September 11, there has been some serious thinking in the fire service about tactics and firefighter survival. These buildings would be a good place to start by saying, “We will not put firefighters into impossible situations.” It may be that “The charge of the Light Brigade” attitude will die out.
Many of you have not enough time to read everything presented to you, so I will present some salient points now.
- These buildings are potential deathtraps for firefighters.
- A fire will generate enough toxins to make the scene a haz-mat incident, where we do not rush pell-mell into unknown hazards.
- Do not worry about loss of data. If the owners of the data have not duplicated it in several locations, they are incompetent.1
- Do not worry about the loss of equipment. Much of it was obsolete a few months after installation. There will not necessarily be sorrow over the insurer’s updating the equipment. Smoke damage is more significant than water damage.
- Tell the occupants in writing and verbally that
-They must save themselves by evacuating immediately when an alarm sounds.
– A trifling fire in the fuel that is available can become a generator of black toxic gas in seconds.
-Firefighters will not enter the premises if there is zero visibility caused by smoke.
-The first responsibility of the fire department is life safety, including firefighters.
-All exits must be unlocked from the inside at all times because human beings are in the building. “The key is on the manager’s key ring” or other such arrangements are completely unacceptable and will result in the summary arrest of the manager and any superior who ordered such an arrangement.
All must clearly understand that they are in mortal danger when a fire occurs and that it is unlikely that the fire department will be able to rescue them because of the confusing layout and the total toxic smoke blackout. Tell them to get out and stay out and have a designated rendezvous point so that all can be accounted for.
SOME APPLICABLE EXPERIENCE
Since there is no direct experience, we must rely on experience in similar locations and the mindset of many technical people, be they scientists or technicians they trained. Together they form a mosaic that can help us to anticipate problems.
In 1972, there was a very serious fire in basement cable installations in a telephone company building in New York City. Fumes injured scores of firefighters. (This was during the time when macho types did not use their masks.) The cancer death rate is abnormal. In the buildings under consideration here, a displaced SCBA might well result in death. Those whose fire suppression concept consists of “use no water” but don’t bother me about fire load may be converted by the photo (above) of a tower ladder directly connected to billions of gallons of water operating through a window of the telephone building.2
COMPUTER EQUIPMENT REPRESENTS A HUGE FIRE LOAD
In the early days of computers, the Pentagon was doing some alterations in the computer area below the concrete concourse. The guard was given a CO2 extinguisher, to prevent the dreaded “water damage.” A lightbulb ignited the low-density combustible tile ceiling. There was no water damage, but the computers were ruined and the heat was so great that the concrete floor of the concourse collapsed.
First Interstate Fire, Los Angeles
In the First Interstate Bank fire in Los Angeles, a wide-open floor filled with computers presented the fire department on arrival with a floor fully involved in fire with autoextension to the floor above by way of window openings. The guards were resetting the alarms at the time; a maintenance man went to the floor to investigate. He died when the elevator car door opened into the fire.3
The Atomic Energy Commission
In the AEC, Donald Keigher, SFPE (Fellow) and recipient of the National Fire Protection Association’s Lamb Medal, and I teamed up on the computer fire problem. Sprinklers are the only answer. We developed a movie showing that sprinklers could do the job. A most telling sequence was 90 seconds of flame bathing a sprinkler head before it operated, destroying the myth that sprinklers could be triggered by “lighting a pipe.” Those who objected on the grounds of piping leaks were challenged with “then you will have no toilets, wash basins, or drinking fountains in the building.” The subsequent discussion focused on the test requirements for sprinkler piping as compared with those for domestic water piping. All AEC computer facilities were sprinklered.
Brooklyn Navy Yard
In the 1960s, the Aircraft Carrier USS Constellation was severely damaged by a fire while fitting out at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. There were 50 fatalities. Computers lay soaked in saltwater for months. The Naval Research Laboratory (which has developed “Stay Dry”) washed the computers in an ultrasonic bath of a mixture of diesel oil and naphtha. The equipment was restored to use. Fire-damaged equipment was beyond repair.
CO2 FAVORED OVER WATER
It seems that scientists are born with an aversion to water and infinite confidence in CO2. The fire department stopped a Livermore, California, laboratory fire just short of a room in which enough radioactive material was stored; if dispersed, the material would have seriously contaminated the facility. The scientists were taking the usual academic approach-form committees to approve each project. I argued that providing sprinklers would control any fire. They were unimpressed until I declared “Automatic sprinklers give academic freedom ellipse.” The cheers and laughter drowned out the rest of the sentence “to make stupid mistakes.” The building was sprinklered.
When conducting a seminar for freshmen engineering students, Professor Vincent Brannigan, JD (our son), of the Fire Protection Engineering Department at University of Maryland, learned that more than half believed that if one sprinkler head activated, all heads went off. It is at least questionable whether they will think differently after four years of engineering school.
At the Princeton University Cyclotron fire, faculty members with impressive advanced science degrees tried to smother a fire in two seven-foot-wide tubs of oil in a huge room with handheld CO2 extinguishers discharged through ports in the radiation shielding.4
Fire protection was often disregarded in the planning of scientific facilities. After one fire, the person in charge called up to find out how to collect the insurance money. He was astonished to learn that the U.S. Government is not a self-insurer (which involves setting aside funds for disaster) and that, except for relatively minor losses, the replacement of the proj-ect involves the entire appropriation process.
When in New York on other AEC business, I dropped in at my old office. I was shown the final plans for the Cambridge (MA) Electron Accelerator. This machine was to deliver a beam of electrons to a tank of liquid hydrogen. The plan showed it right in the middle of the laboratory. I realized leaks were inevitable and there were numerous ignition sources. I asked the engineer, “Why isn’t this bomb out in the boondocks where there is room to separate it from the rest of the facility?” The reply was, “Doctor X wants it that way.”5
Some top scientists had a habit of going right to the top to bypass “petty bureaucrats with their rules.” I said to the engineer, “You had better get a consultant and unload this.” They hired the retired chief engineer of a major insurance company. He assumed an explosion and designed a “fort so that any explosion would blow out the roof.” This, of course, ensured limited damage to surrounding insured property.
The first time the unit was run, it blew up. There were two fatalities. When the fire department arrived at the raging fire, a man met them and said, “There is a lot of delicate equipment in there. Do you have dry chemical?”
“Yes,” replied the chief, “but not enough.”
A number of Ph.D. candidates had built their programs around the accelerator. It was shipped to Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. It was never used because all available money was being spent to finish the Fermi Lab in downstate Illinois. Word got around through the scientific community that, like the nursery rhyme, “If you lose your mittens, you do not get a new pair.” Thereafter, the possibility of loss of the project by fire was a serious planning consideration. It was a very useful fire.
I have pictures of major experimental machines at Los Alamos in sprinklered buildings with sprinklers inside the machines because of the quantity of plastic.
People engrossed in what they think is important work often delay responding to an alarm or ignore it entirely. “Do you think this is a grammar school?” was the initial reaction at one project when a fire drill was requested.
At an old dump of a building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, highly skilled Massachusetts Institute of Technology employees developed fuel elements for nuclear submarines. It was my practice to pull a fire alarm immediately. I arrived at the building for an inspection. Admiral Hyman Rickover, the genius who fathered the nuclear Navy, was presiding at a meeting. Without any knowledge that the alarm was not real, he decided it was a drill and ordered all to stay and continue their meeting. A memo I wrote to Rickover was quickly quashed.
Tight security was paramount in the AEC’s Division of Military Applications. The doors had combination locks that were not filed with the guard force. Quantities of paper were exposed because the suite of offices was “one big safe.” The director issued a memo that said: “In case of fire, the duty officer will be called from home, open the office, and extinguish the fire.”
My memo said: “If the duty officer attempts to follow your order, he will be killed. The fire will be extinguished by the fire department throwing water through the windows until it flows over the windowsill, when we will be sure the fire is out.” He called me to come see him. The situation was resolved satisfactorily.
Laying the problem out in no uncertain terms will often bring sincere cooperation.
PREPLANNING
Adequate preplanning discussions are difficult. Few, if any, of the people you deal with have ever seen a serious fire in such an environment. They have been “educated” by fires on TV and in movies; these almost smokeless fires are suppressed by the turn of a gas valve. These structures resemble a submarine where equipment is jammed into tight spaces. In an earlier column, I told of how I spoke to five “Chiefs of the Boats” (the guy who knows all on submarines) before one suggested “the salvage air lines” as the means by which I could introduce CO2 into the boat because an attack down the conning tower would have been impossible.
First, last, and always, the fire department’s priority and number one concern is to determine if manual firefighting is at all feasible; our first consideration is firefighter health and safety.
At the Naval Shipyard at Norfolk, Virginia, a number of workmen had lost their lives in a fire in a ship that was under repair. Thereafter, the light on the fire alarm was set to blinking. The blinking lights got immediate attention. In the AEC after two instances of persons being left inside a cyclotron when it was started up, I recommended that the startup procedure begin with cutting off the lights, leaving only emergency lighting. Perhaps some facility will adopt such a procedure.
A FEW THOUGHTS COME TO MIND
If a fire is small enough to be extinguished by an extinguisher, do not use dry chemical because it can severely damage equipment.
In many cases, the buildings are converted from existing empty buildings by a developer attracted by the high rents expected from future tenants who will be creating the hazards that might better have been dealt with as the building was being converted. This is not the same situation that prevails when an organization that understands the need for uninterrupted operation and the potential for fire loss builds such a structure from the ground up. The developer’s interest will lie in getting exceptions from inconvenient code provisions from officials thirsting for the tax revenues the building will bring.
The structures may range from heavy-duty concrete buildings to “aged strip malls” with combustible metal deck roofs or wood trusses.
In a Chicago tech center, each of five tenants will maintain its own air-conditioning system. This is reminiscent of the practice of some mall developers’ having each tenant provide its own sprinkler system. How will this work out if the HVAC system is to be used to evacuate smoke? Will the fire department be sued if it breaches a wall to vent smoke and thus allow the equipment-damaging smoke to pass from tenant A’s fire through tenant B’s property?
What will happen if it is necessary to cut power to the building for firefighter safety? Will an automatic backup generator recharge lines thought to be dead?
If an old remodeled building is involved, look for the following common, serious hazard, which is not specifically prohibited by any building code of which I am aware. The code will require that a new ceiling that meets flame-spread requirements (usually lay-in tiles on a grid) be installed, but it allows the old tile to be left in place. This concealed fuel generates huge quantities of CO, which will ignite in a flashover.6 This deadly hazard is discussed under “Remodeled Ceiling Hazards” on page 389 of Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition.
The chief objective of the fire department’s plan must be firefighter safety in the face of an impossible fire situation. Be aware that the “Fireman’s Rule” prevails in the legal system of many states. This rule prevents firefighters from suing the person who created an extraordinary hazard because firefighters “assume the risks of their profession.”
Copy this article and the Thiel article referred to above. Study them if one of these “hotels” is to be built in your area. Send copies to the building department. Make your department’s position known to the managements of the hotels, and make every effort to get this information to the companies that deposit their information for safekeeping. This might be most useful if there is a lawsuit after the fire.
During the Civil War, thousands on both sides were slaughtered by headlong charges in such battles as Fredericksburg and Gettysburg. No one can question the courage of those men, but we must realize that their leaders had not recognized the improvements in ordnance that made such charges slaughter pens.
Will the leaders of the fire service realize that a serious fire is just another haz-mat situation to be approached with the same caution?
These buildings are extremely hazardous. It is up to the employees and their management to plan for and enforce immediate evacuation if a fire occurs. They must understand that firefighters will not be sent into a black maze to attempt impossible search and rescue.
Note: A fire officer sent me excellent jpeg pictures of wooden I-beams supporting tons of concrete. The identity of the sender has been misplaced. Please identify yourself to Fbrannigan@aol.com.
Endnotes
- Preserving valuable data in multiple locations is not a new idea. The National Railway Guide was a monthly four-inch-thick book that listed the timetable of every railroad in the country. Each month, 10 copies of the book were taken to vaults in downtown New York, Brooklyn, and New Jersey.
- A photo of the huge clouds of toxic smoke can be seen on page 428 of Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition.
- Case studies related to this topic may be found on page 506 of Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition.
- The fire burned for several hours until the Naval Air Station Lakehurst Fire Department arrived and put it out in 90 seconds with a fog and foam line.
- I am convinced that Dr. X wanted his new tool to be easily accessible to show to visiting colleagues. Many important decisions are made at the whim of the powerful.
- This hazard killed 16 people at the John Sevier retirement home in Johnson City, Tennessee. It has killed several firefighters. Point out to the management that you would have to use an open-bore, 21/2-inch line to blow away the suspended ceiling and eliminate the confined void, which creates a bomb.
FRANCIS L. BRANNIGAN, SFPE (Fellow), recipient of Fire Engineering’s first Lifetime Achievement Award, has devoted more than half of his 59-year career to the safety of firefighters in building fires. He is well known for his lectures and videotapes and as the author of Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition (National Fire Protection Association, 1992). Brannigan is an editorial advisory board member of Fire Engineering.
