BY FRANCIS L. BRANNIGAN SFPE (FELLOW)
Six persons died in a Chicago high-rise county administration office building on October 17. As usual, there is finger pointing; in my opinion, the finger pointing is misdirected. It is a fact that any unsprinklered high-rise building is a potential deathtrap. At this writing, I do not know the contents of the fire load that produced the enormous amount of toxic gas, but we can be quite sure that this hazard received no attention when the building was being designed. Now, almost every commentator points out the lack of automatic sprinklers. This disaster is the result of many factors, which I present in a more extended paper.1 This column is a summary.
THE HIGH RISE LIFE SAFETY PROBLEM
Post World War II developers wanted cheaper, lighter buildings. The prewar fire experience of high-rise office buildings was excellent. In New York City, which had more high-rises than the rest of the country put together, high-rise factory (loft) buildings were fully sprinklered as a result of the Triangle fire and had many working fires, usually because of collected rubbish near the service elevator or scraps under wide cutting tables. “Sprinkler Experience in High Rise Buildings” by Robert Powers of the New York Board of Fire Underwriters was dismissed from consideration and said to be applicable only to factories, not office buildings. Office building fires usually were no problem. There were a few serious vertical service shaft fires, and a small plane hit a building on Pine Street, but the usual high-rise office building fire was handled by an engine and a truck.
Because of the need for natural light and ventilation, the buildings were narrow towers with modest floor areas—and thus had modest fire loads.
Several significant changes took place but went unanalyzed by fire departments, which were, and in many cases still are, not really organized to anticipate problems but rather prefer to learn from “experience,” preferably local experience.
Floor area. Fluorescent lights eliminated the need for daylight, so floor areas could be infinite, placing much of the fire load beyond the reach of hand streams directed from stairways. The increase in floor area meant an increase in fire and occupant loads.
Since all occupants could not be evacuated in a reasonable time, only the fire floor and the floor above and below were to be alarmed and evacuated. The stack effect, discussed below, was ignored.
Total sealing of the building to manage air treatment made the buildings subject to stack effect. Winter stack effect can deliver toxic smoke directly from the basement to the top floor through shafts. Summer stack effect can pollute several floors below the fire.
As noted in Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition (BCFS3): “Stack effect can completely confuse an uninformed command” (pp. 481-485).
There was a smoky fire in a stock of magazines in the basement of the Times Tower (where the ball falls on New Year’s Eve). Two firefighters were sent to search the upper floors. They left their SCBAs in the lobby, since it appeared that they would not be needed. They died on an upper floor of CO poisoning. The elevator operator was found dead in the car.
As far back as 1975, the Society of Fire Protection Engineers warned that the then current fire loads were not anticipated by codes. Fire load, however, was not thought of as solidified toxic gas.
Sprinklers were derided as expensive overprotection. Proponents were chided: “Next, you guys will want fireproof paper.” Fire resistance standards were attacked as expensive overbuilding.
The Federal Government’s General Services Administration (GSA) sponsored a committee, on which I served, at the National Academy of Science to study the nationally accepted building codes for the least restrictive requirement in every category; the objective was to assemble a Federal Building Code that would be “the least of the least.” The climate was not favorable for those who understood that it was paramount to put out the fire promptly to reduce the generation of toxic gases.
Some of the rationales were “We have an automatic fire alarm” and “The fire department is around the corner and would be here in a jiffy.” Fire departments were loath to tell the public that it might take 20 minutes or more before they got water on the fire even if they arrived promptly. Fire alarms often were not transmitted directly to the fire department; they were held up until the building staff investigated. This practice has cost lives of building personnel and hotel guests.
It was believed that defined enclosed fire areas, as specified in the New York City (NYC) code, where developers (who are big political contributors) vehemently opposed sprinklers, would confine the fire. The containment concept worked in the Westvaco fire in NYC, but it took 400 firefighters to confine it. A similar army was required for the First Interstate Bank fire in Los Angeles; the fire spread vertically by autoextension. Both were nighttime fires, so it was said, “Things would be different if it were daytime.” A Los Angeles chief officer was asked at a National Fire Protection Association meeting what would have happened in a daytime fire. He replied, “Someone would have used an extinguisher; others would have run out the building fire hose.” Depending on citizens to stay in a toxic area to fight fire in shirtsleeves, without the $2,000 worth of protection provided to firefighters—when the general safety advice is to get out—is ridiculous, probably criminal, and certainly not an adequate system. The Interstate fire was on the bank’s trading floor. People would have been on the phones or computers making million- or even billion-dollar deals. I suspect that like the English soccer fans at Bradford Stadium who kept watching the game while the stands were burning, they might have ignored the fire and kept finishing trades. As for water, heaven forbid! The use of water was forbidden because of the computers.
Computers in the Pentagon were in an area under renovation. A guard was given a CO2 extinguisher, to avoid water damage. A lightbulb set fire to the combustible tile ceiling. The extinguisher, as you would expect, was ineffective. The fire destroyed the computers and collapsed the concrete floor above. The loss was total, so there was no water damage.
Atomic Energy Commission computers were sprinklered as a result of a movie Donald J. Keigher, SFPE fellow and recipient of the NFPA’s Lamb Medal, and I made. Step by step, it drew the viewer to the inevitable conclusion that sprinklers were the best assurance that computers and their contained data would survive a fire.
A MINOR FIRE CAUSES A BIG CHANGE
A fire occurred in a federal office building under construction in Cleveland (BCFS3, 483). This fire had significant aftereffects. The building was built to consolidate a large number of federal offices scattered over Cleveland and its environs. A move like this is often a near disaster for employees who have babysitting arrangements, car-pool arrangements, school transport arrangements, and the like. These disaffected employees now had a wonderful, media-perfect weapon: “The government is moving us into a deathtrap.” Guided by Harold (Bud) Nelson, SFPE fellow, the fire protection engineer for the GSA Federal Building Service, the GSA reversed its policy of seeking the cheapest high-rise buildings to building the safest.
An International Conference on Fire Safety in High-Rise Buildings was convened in Spring 1971. I presented unsuccessfully my argument (BCFS3, 451) that the height of the building (more than six stories) was not as important as the time it took for the occupants to reach a safe environment. My argument failed. The conference concluded with the opinion that automatic sprinklers were the most reliable life safety feature for high-rise office buildings. Other important improvements were also presented. Shortly thereafter, the Seattle Federal Building was built. It embodied the concepts of full sprinkler protection and other improvements recommended by the conference.
The federal government regarded total building air-conditioning as a luxury. In an endeavor to prove the necessity for total air-conditioning, HVAC engineers teamed up with some fire protection engineers, whose object was to prove that they could provide really “engineered fire protection” instead of “boiler plate factory-type recommendations for off-the-shelf sprinklers” to promote the concept of the dual-purpose HVAC/smoke-removal system, thus permitting “easy access for firefighters to combat the fire.” I felt that this was a vast oversimplification. At a meeting called for the purpose of promoting the concept, I asked for time to point out the problems. I was given time during the coffee break.
A fire protection engineer enthusiast presented at an International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) annual conference. He exclaimed, “Let the fire burn, but let it burn freely and let the fire department extinguish it.” Nobody was present to make the following objections: The clean burning fire may produce enough heat to make manual firefighting impossible, as happened in the Postal Headquarters Building Fire. The fire might cause structural elements to fail, particularly the bar joists “protected” by a suspended ceiling of lay-in tiles (BCFS3, 294-299). The fire is degrading materials all around the perimeter, thus generating toxic gases in possibly huge quantities, exposing the hapless occupants. Unfortunately, the IAFC published the paper without any critical comment.2
In 1957 when I was with the Atomic Energy Commission, I conducted training seminars for fire instructors. One addressed a radiation contamination problem involving bromine 82; its 32-hour half-life would cause it to decay in a short time. I arranged to give a seminar at the University of Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute for the Chesapeake and Delaware chapters of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. The following is a quote from a letter from the president of the Delaware Chapter, W.J. Baker, who later became president of the Society: “I am hoping you prepare the entire course stressing the property end and playing down the life safety angle.”
The letter was copied to Bob Moulton and Dick Stevens at the NFPA, and I received no comments from them. Not everyone was oblivious to the life hazard of high-rise buildings. Bethesda (MD) Naval Hospital was erected as a slender tower, as suggested by the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with one stairway. There was much combustible fiberboard acoustical tile. At the time, its hazard was not generally recognized. The Secret Service would not permit President Lyndon Johnson to be placed in the presidential suite in the tower. They insisted on a second-floor room and convinced the chief of the Bethesda Fire Department, which had the only aerial ladder in Montgomery County at the time, to station his aerial at the window of the president’s room.
Retired Deputy Chief Elmer (Bud) Chapman of the Fire Department of New York, the Midtown Manhattan high-rise area, was and still is an avid student of the fire problems of high-rise construction. He has paid particular attention to the smoke-removal problem. As a member of the NFPA 92a, Recommended Practice for Smoke Control Systems, committee, he warned against using automatic smoke removal without sprinklers. Since the thinking of some experts was that “engineered” smoke removal would substitute for sprinklers, his practical experience in high-rise fire protection was not very welcome. There was a failed attempt to remove him from the committee; he stayed, paying his own expenses as he had always done. His serious objections to automatic smoke removal in unsprinklered buildings are in BCFS3, 489-490.
Combined HVAC smoke removal systems without sprinklers were widely used in constructing high-rise buildings. The Sears Tower in Chicago was voluntarily sprinklered. The World Trade Center was built without sprinklers. After a third-alarm wire chase fire, sprinklers were installed in wire rooms and chases.3
Endnotes
1. For the full paper, e-mail me at Fbrannigan@comcast.net.
2. Property insurance companies of that day considered property protection their business and life safety somebody else’s problem. I have not seen Factory Mutual Record or FIA (now IRI) Sentinel lately, but both carried disclaimers, pointing out life safety was not their concern. Some fire protection engineers clung strictly to that position.
3. Chapters 10, 11, and 13 of BCFS3 are pertinent to this discussion.
SPECIAL WINTER WARNINGS
- Concrete must be kept above freezing while curing. The improvised heating can create a deadly collapse hazard. If temperatures are below freezing in your area, study and apply the information in Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition (BCFS3), pp. 350-359, and the photo on page 346. Failure to plan for defensive operations may result in mass firefighter fatalities.
- Flammable decorations, including Christmas trees, may create mass-casualty situations. Ten students died at Providence College in 1978 when paper decorations in the corridor were ignited (BCFS3, 400-402). This and other fire stories such as the Rhode Island Station Nightclub fire will help you when you become “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.”
FRANCIS L. BRANNIGAN, SFPE (Fellow), the recipient of Fire Engineering’s first Lifetime Achievement Award, has devoted more than half of his 61-year career to the safety of firefighters in building fires. He is well known as the author of Building Construction for the Fire Service, Third Edition, (National Fire Protection Association, 1992) and for his lectures and videotapes. Brannigan is an editorial advisory board member of Fire Engineering.
