ch 12 specific occupancy details and hazards
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TRANSCRIPT
11 Specific
Occupancy Details and Hazards
Objectives (1 of 2)
• Determine the unique design and construction details found in buildings based on occupancy type
• Establish how occupancy-specific building code requirements dictate particular safety features
11
Objectives (2 of 2)
• Identify the unique details and hazards associated with specific occupancies
• Understand how occupancy specifics affect firefighting operations
11
Introduction • Occupancy
• Is the type of use• Plays a role in how a building is
constructed• This chapter gives occupancy types and
building hazards • Details related to codes are city specific• The codes in your locale may differ
11
Apartment Buildings
• Garden Apartments
• Combustible multiple dwellings include garden apartments, modern row houses, and townhouses
• “Condominium” is not a usefully descriptive term for fire fighters
11
Characteristics of Garden Apartments
• Solid masonry
• Brick veneer over platform wood frame
• Partially solid masonry, partially brick veneer on wood
• Wood
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Height Limit
• Three stories
• Difficult to reach victims at rear windows of top-floor apartments
11
Individual Living Units
• Usually confined to one floor
• Some are multi-floor units
• Some structures may have both one floor and multi-floor units
11
Balconies
• Customary in many apartments
• Combustible or noncombustible construction
• Cantilevered balconies can collapse in fires
11
Gable Roof Attics
• These extend over the entire structure
• Attic fire barriers are frequently not effective because they have been compromised
11
Peaked Roofs
• Are dangerous to fire fighters
• They must have a pitch to drain rain water
• Pitch creates a void between the tops of horizontal ceiling beams and the sloping roof
• Fire can spread laterally through this space
11
Interior Construction
• Is almost totally of wood
• Multiplies the fire extension potential through the voids inherent in combustible construction
11
Plumbing Fixtures
• Vertically aligned
• Piping is run through vertical voids
• Structural members weakened by cutting
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Escaping a Burning Structure
• Escaping from a single-floor ranch home is easier than from the top floor of a combustible multiple dwelling
• Stairways, enclosures, and attics overhead are combustible
• Stairways are safe for no one
11
Educating the Management and Tenants
• Be fully insured
• Keep property in a bank vault
• Call the fire department immediately if a fire or gas leak is suspected
• In a fire, evacuate immediately, even if the fire seems inconsequential
11
Parking
• Space is generally limited• Need minimum of 20 feet of
clear width, proper turning radii, red striping of curbs, and signage
• Illegal parking must be eliminated
11
Building Location
• Map drill
• Drill identifies gullies and fences
• Building owners should be encouraged to provide lettering and numbering on buildings
11
Gas Service• Provides special hazards• Layout usually done with little thought for
fire fighters• Meters are grouped together and represent
a substantial weight• Case example: Gas hangers giving way• Case example: Single large gas tank had
its regulator fail
11
Water Supply
• Hydrants often on private mains
• Should be checked periodically
• Older complexes often have undersized mains
• Have the owner conduct a flow test
11
Protected Combustible Construction
• Fire-rated gypsum board sheathing or shell of the structure prevents the spread of fires
• Does not yield heat when burned in pure oxygen
• Gypsum has excellent fire protection characteristics
11
Effect of Fire on Gypsum Board
• Calcination occurs when gypsum board is heated by fire
• This process appears to be irreversible
• Removing all burned gypsum board makes the most sense
11
Fire Rating of Gypsum Board (1 of 2)
• National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 251/American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) E119 fire-resistance test
• Rating of gypsum board cannot be separated from the test structure of which it was a part
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Fire Rating of Gypsum Board (2 of 2)
• Underwriters Laboratory (UL) warns that its rating is not assigned to individual components
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Gypsum Board Installation —Deficiencies
• Gypsum board commonly is nailed up over voids with a large or even infinite air supply behind it; ample air exists to fuel fires
• Nail heads not properly cemented over
• Joints not properly taped
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Protective Sheathing
• Protects the combustible structure from a fire in the contents
• A single hole can cause disaster
• Any penetration allows the fire to spread to the structure, thus converting a contents fire to a structural fire
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Penetrations (1 of 2)
• Failure to close the gypsum sheath around utilities
• Failure to install the gypsum sheath behind the bathtub
• Thin wood door casings are the only sheaths
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Penetrations (2 of 2)
• Fire can ride the ventilation air flow in attics
• Floors are easily penetrated downward by a fire with today’s fuels
• Dangerous, hidden voids are prevalent in the rehabilitation of older buildings
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Protected Combustible Is Not Fire Resistive
• NFPA 25/ASTM E119
• The “fire resistive” characterization should be rejected
• Even “protected combustible” is overly generous
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Firewalls/Barriers and Draft Stops
• Firewalls are often used to separate units in multi-family residential structures
• Primary defect involves not bringing a masonry firewall through the roof with a masonry parapet
• Masonry typically not fitted tight enough to roof
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Overhangs or Mansards
• Permitting them to project beyond the firewall is another defect in firewalls
• This provides a gap for fire to pass around the end of the wall
• Fire can pass around a firewall that ends at the interior of a combustible exterior wall
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Utilities
• Often are passed through the firewall
• Openings around pipes pass fire
• Better to run utility mains parallel to the building with branches into each unit
• Utility openings cut into firewalls are often unprotected
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Openings at the Basement Level
• Provide access to storage and laundry areas
• Usually designed and built with proper self-closing doors
• Often, doors are blocked open
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Firewall as a Party Wall
• Creates problems
• Party walls often have beams or girders from both sides in the same opening
• Common openings provide a path for fire extension
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Older Row-Frame Buildings
• Often had brick laid in the party wall stud voids as a firewall
• Barrier is incomplete
• The brick nogging (brick and mortar filling between studs) does not block the floor or attic voids
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Firewalls/Barriers and Draft Stops
• Are intended to limit the combustible void area in the attic to which the fire has access
• Some barriers are now being made of two-inch gypsum plank
• Cuts produce openings for fire access
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Effectiveness of the Fire Barrier
• May range from temporarily reliable to totally useless
• Never as good as a parapeted masonry firewall
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Defects in Fire Barriers and Draft Stops
• Delaminated plywood
• Barriers that do not extend out to the eaves but stop at the wall line
• Omitted nail coverings and joint taping, and utilities or structural elements passing through
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Fire Barriers above the Mid-point of a Room
• Both sides of the barrier are exposed to fire coming out the windows
• Fire barrier is placed even if it doesn’t continue a fire separation below
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A Word about Sprinklers
• Automatic sprinklers
• Extinguish content fires
• Rarely will control any fire that originates in, or extends to, the voids
• NFPA 13R
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NFPA 13R Systems and Garden Apartments Complexes• Often share the same water main with the
hydrants that are in the complex
• Hooking to a hydrant can take water from the sprinkler system
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Serving the Citizens
• Homeowners
• Have personal property or homeowners’ insurance
• Renters’ insurance
• Too inexpensive to be actively sold
• Renters suffer crushing financial blows
11
Older Row Frame Buildings
• Frame buildings often erected in rows
• Structures are contiguous
• Often have a common attic or cockloft
• May have party walls
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Brick or Stone Nogging
• Is a crude attempt at creating a fire barrier
• Does not cut the floor voids or the cockloft
• Served as a heat sink for warmth
• Acts as additional hazard in a collapse
11
Townhouses
• New name for row house
• Rarely does an adequate masonry firewall exist between the separate buildings
• Without such a firewall, entire structure is all one building
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The Three Decker
• Typically found in New England
• Three-story flat-roofed structures with three apartment units
• They have porches on each level
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Porches of Three Deckers
• Play a critical role in fire spread
• The porches offer a large surface area on which the fire can burn
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Atria
• A large open space within a structure connecting two or more floors
• A large void that passes through multiple floors allowing smoke and heat to move vertically through the building
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Codes Requirements for Atria
• Full sprinkler protection throughout the building
• A smoke control system
• Standby power for the building
• Floor limited to “low” fire hazards
• Up to three floors can be “open”
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Three Levels Open to the Atrium
• Must be included in the calculations of the smoke control system design
• Volume is included in the exhaust system
• System must exhaust smoke from these areas
• Designs often neglect to provide a means for exhausting these areas
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Smoke Control System
• Activation is usually triggered by water flow and smoke detectors
• Projected beam detectors can cover large areas with a single beam of light
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Sprinkler Protection
• Usually straightforward in buildings with an atrium
• Atrium and floors open to the atrium are zoned separately from the sprinklers in the rest of the building
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National Experience
• Limited experience with actual fires in atria
• Case example: In 1991, a fire occurred in the Polo Club high-rise in Denver
• Case example: Grand Californian Hotel in Anaheim in 2005
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Churches and Synagogues
• Open area structures
• Large occupant loads
• Holidays bring special concerns
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Older Churches
• Sometimes have multiple levels of seating
• Galleries surround the main sanctuary
• Narrow stairs impede egress
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Stained Glass Windows
• Valuable for ventilation
• Invaluable in terms of cost and heritage
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Renovations
• Cutting and welding operations, burning off old paint, and other construction activities have ignited numerous churches and synagogues
• Case example: 1998 New York City Central Synagogue blaze
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Covered Mall Buildings
• A single building enclosing a number of tenants
• Anchor stores, large stores attached to the mall, have all of their required exits independent of the mall
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Recent Building Codes
• Have allowed covered mall buildings to be of unlimited area
• Predicated on the use of Type I, II, II, or IV construction and having 60 feet of open space around them
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Vertical Spread of Heat and Smoke in a Fire
• Malls have the added problem of horizontal spread of heat/smoke
• None of the tenant spaces have a fire-rated separation from the mall
• Malls have large occupant loads
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Physical Separation Between Tenants
• Must be fire-rated
• Need not go to the floor/roof deck above
• A roll down grille-type gate will allow smoke to move into the mall proper
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Fire Protection in Malls
• Complete sprinkler protection
• A smoke control system
• A standpipe system
• An emergency voice communications system
• Standby power
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System Requirements
• Require analysis during your preplanning
• Sprinkler system often separately zoned for mall proper and tenant spaces
• Feed main supplying the tenant spaces will run along the front of the store
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Standpipe System
• Is a Class I system• Hose outlets in the mall at
the entrance to each corridor and exit passageway
• Outlets also at each floor level in stairwells and at exterior public entrances
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Smoke Control System
• Similar to that of an atrium
• Attempts to minimize horizontal movement of the smoke
• Attempts to exhaust the smoke through the roof over the mall
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City Requirements
• Some require a standardized lettering and numbering system
• Letters designate blocks/rows of stores and numbers indicating particular tenants
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Factories
• Production equipment can pose a safety risk to fire fighters
• Hazards include large moving parts, confined spaces, and pressurized vessels
• The weight of the machinery in a building on fire could cause a collapse
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The Building Itself
• Circular stairwells
• Ship’s ladders
• Open loading docks, limited access (including lack of windows), and adjacent storage/warehouse areas
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Hazardous Materials Production and Storage
• Storage includes the more familiar flammable and combustible liquids as well as more exotic substances
• Pyrophoric gas is gas that ignites in air without the introduction of an ignition source
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Fire Codes
• Hazardous materials management plan (HMMP)
• Hazardous materials inventory statement (HMIS)
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Limits on Quantity
• Codes specify types of hazardous materials that may be stored/used in a building
• Exempt quantities are permitted
• Exempt quantities are permitted in control areas
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When Amount Exceeds the Exempt Quantity
• Numerous construction requirements apply
• Special systems or building features will be required
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Explosives
• Building codes require that they be handled in buildings with substantial fire-resistive construction
• This restraint almost guarantees increased explosive destruction
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Buildings Housing Hazardous Processes
• Used to be isolated and built of friable construction elements
• A steel frame covered with an easy-to-replace material is another method
• If an explosion occurred, the board became dust-like particles
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Special-Purpose Buildings
• May be designed to channel the force of an internal explosion in a desired direction
• Heavy walls can protect one transformer from an explosion in an adjacent transformer
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High-Rises
• There are many definitions of high-rise buildings
• International Conference on Fire Safety in High-Rise Buildings defined a high-rise as a building beyond the reach of aerial ladder equipment
• Author Brannigan disagrees
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Fire Department Tactics
• Preceding definition is acceptable and valid as applied to tactics
• Other buildings which are not high rises, such as airport terminals and large shopping malls, present many of the same problems
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High-Rise Buildings: Potential Problems
• Not just one single problem
• Fire-significant construction differences exist among high-rises
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High-Rise Building Design
• Usually designed to resist the effects of fire on the structural frame of the building and the floors
• Whether the design concepts used are adequate to cope with all these possible effects is quite another matter
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General Classifications of High-Rise Buildings
• Fire-resistive high-rise buildings have evolved over time
• Buildings built during certain time frames tend to share some common characteristics
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Early Fire-Resistive Buildings, 1870–1930
• There were no standards for the protection of steel
• Cast iron columns and steel ties were often exposed
• Terra cotta fireproofing was compromised.
• Voids were created by wooden floors placed on piers
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Other Hazards in Early Fire-Resistive Buildings (1 of 2)
• Segmental (curved) brick or tile arch floors were tied with exposed steel ties; often laid in an improvised manner
• Segmental brick and tile arches were supplanted by terra cotta tile arches
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Other Hazards in Early Fire-Resistive Buildings (2 of 2)
• No protection was provided for the underside of the steel beams
• Other common hazards: high fire loads, poor masonry closures, inadequate standpipe systems
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Later High-Rise Building Construction, 1920–1940 (1 of 2)
• Generally excellent buildings with typically low fire loads
• Were universally of steel-framed construction
• Floor construction and steel fireproofing were often concrete or tile.
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Later High-Rise Building Construction, 1920–1940 (2 of 2)
• Small floor areas and each floor was a well-segregated fire area
• Standpipe systems wet and pressurized
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Modern High-Rise Buildings (1 of 2)
• Many floors have substantial areas beyond the reach of hand hose streams.
• Reinforced concrete became a serious competitor to steel as a construction material
• Necessity for fireproofing is an apparent cost disadvantage to steel
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Modern High-Rise Buildings (2 of 2)
• Electrical services and communications systems have increased, along with flammable insulation
• Steel-truss floor and ceiling assemblies provide useful voids for fire and smoke
• Gypsum rather than masonry is often used to enclose elevator and other shafts
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General Problems and Hazards with High-Rises
• Multiple problems can exist across buildings of different eras
• Common issues to consider: exists, stairways (including accommodation and access stairs), possible areas for forcible entry, elevators, building occupancy
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Exits
• Should provide a clear path to the outside
• Model building codes have permitted 50% of exit stairwells to end in the building’s lobby
• This arrangement is confusing to occupants
• Case example: 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York
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Occupancy
• Offices, hotels, apartments, homes for the elderly, factories, and showrooms are all different
• Some buildings have mixed occupancies
• Case example: Different standards applied to apartments versus office in same building
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Accommodation or Access Stairs
• Access stairways are usually done as alterations and are rarely enclosed Result is two or more floors becoming one fire area
• Case example: One Meridian Plaza fire
• Duplex and triplex apartments often have no exits from the upper levels
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Forcible Entry
• Building security (e.g., multiple locks) may make entry difficult
• Common area for forcible entry: gypsum wallboard on studs
• Reinforced masonry is difficult to breach
• Stairways may be locked against re-entry; some codes require no more than four intervening floors between re-entry floors
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Elevators (1 of 2)
• Extrication of trapped persons requires detailed knowledge
• Hardened and robust elevators and shafts recently developed
• Some elevators inaccessible to fire fighters
• Case example: One Meridian Plaza fire
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Elevators (2 of 2)
• Shaft and elevator door restrictors prevent opening from inside
• Case example: World Trade Center, September 11, 2001
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Smoke Movement in High-Rise Buildings
• Thermal Energy
• Is the principal smoke-moving mechanism
• Can be massive
• Case example: MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas. The burning rate of the fuel was estimated at 3 tons per minute
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Atmospheric Conditions
• Lapse is when the atmospheric temperature decreases as height increases
• Pause occurs if there is a layer of air warmer than the air below it
• Inversion layer acts as a roof to rising smoke
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Wind
• If the windows are out and the fire is on the leeward side of the building, fire suppression may be “a piece of cake”
• If the fire on the windward side of the building, it may be impossible to move into the fire floor
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Stack Effect (1 of 2)
• The movement of air inside a tightly sealed building
• Stack effect is not caused by a fire
• Most significant in cold climates in the wintertime
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Stack Effect (2 of 2)
• In winter: delivers smoke that has lost thermal energy to upper floors
• In summer: makes cold smoke fall downward
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Air Conditioning
• Individual room units
• Single-floor systems
• One or more building systems for the entire building
• Modern systems have full-exhaust capability
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Smoke Removal Systems
• Questions to ask
• Will the fire department operate the system?
• Will the building engineer operate it?
11
Fire Control
• Some say this can be accomplished by manipulating the air supply
• There is no such thing as a clean-burning, hostile fire
• In a fire, materials generate toxic and explosive gases
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Smoke Removal System Design
• Design is an extremely complicated task
• Can supplement the primary defense but it is certainly no substitute for adequate protection
• Complex in larger buildings
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Compartmentation
• Some assume that fire-resistive buildings automatically provide compartmentation
• This may be case in older buildings, but modern buildings often have poor perimeter fire stopping and multiple penetrations for wiring
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Pressurized Stairways
• One or more of the stairways equipped to be pressurized when fire occurs
• Pressure differential will keep the stairways free of smoke
• Occupants must be trained to use the proper stairway
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Installation of Special Equipment
• Equipment designed to function in case of fire should be installed under the supervision of the fire department
• Fire department should be familiar with its operation and supervise its testing and maintenance
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Fire Load and Flame Spread
• Consider interior trim and contents
• Fires can gain great headway in combustible trim
• Case example: Multiple layers of wall coverings were a major factor in an Atlanta office building fire; 10 died
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Contents
• The new flame spread problem
• Case example: First Interstate Bank fire
• Heavy fire loads may be found in special locations in high-rises
• Heavy plastic loads
• Wood paneling
• Office supply areas; telephone rooms
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Maintenance Operations
• Can provide unexpectedly serious fire loads
• Case example: Union Bank Building fire in Los Angeles on July 18, 1988
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Rubbish
• Often is concentrated in one location
• Condition of material results in high heat release rate
• Case example: A rubbish fire in an elevator
• Case example: Seven people died when a fire roared 35 stories up a blocked trash chute
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Alterations to Occupied Buildings
• Hazard exists when a building is altered or rehabilitated while occupied
• Hotels and motels tend to store furniture and materials haphazardly during renovations
• Case example: The disastrous Dupont Plaza Hotel fire in San Juan, Puerto Rico
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Partial Occupancy of Buildings Under Construction
• Fire protection systems are not complete
• Doors may not yet be installed on stairways and elevators
• LPG may be used in some areas
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Automatic Sprinklers
• Only method to limit toxic gases released in a fire
• The argument against sprinklers is usually an economic one
• The builder is creating the problem for profit. It is up to the builder to provide the solution
11
Some Building Inventory Item Questions
• What is the value of “fireproofing”?
• Will ceiling tile failure permit partial collapse and open fire and smoke passage?
• Will smoke and fire pass to voids above, via re-entrant space?
• Are floor joints adequate firestops?
11
Horizontal Containment Questions
• Are there utility openings or underfloor openings such as for computer cables?
• Have you considered penetration of relatively lightweight gypsum partitions as a substitute for forcible door entry?
• Are there deficiencies of stair enclosures?
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Hospitals and Nursing Homes
• Non-ambulatory people
• Are individuals who are not capable of self-preservation
• The building, the staff, and you must protect them
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Older Facilities
• Many lacked sprinkler protection
• Many have relied on passive protection
• Case example: An unsprinklered hospital in San Antonio in the late 1980s
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Key to Patient Safety
• Move them horizontally, rather than vertically
• Smoke barriers are one-hour fire-rated walls that subdivide each floor into two or more separate areas
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“RACE”
• R: Remove all people in immediate danger to safety
• A: Activate the manual pull station and have someone call 911
• C: Close doors to confine the spread of smoke and fire
• E: Extinguish the fire, if possible
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Hotels and Motels (1 of 2)
• Sites of many serious fires in last 75 years
• The 1990 Hotel and Motel Fire Safety Act
• Encouraged improvements in fire safety for these facilities nationwide
• Despite improvements, fires continue to occur
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Hotels and Motels (2 of 2)
• In older motels, fire spread occurs through voids between the floors
• In newer hotels, interior corridors are conduits for smoke travel
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Jails and Prisons (1 of 2)
• Inmates
• Are restrained and are incapable of getting out of the building to save their lives
• They rely on prison staff and the building for their safety
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Jails and Prisons (2 of 2)
• Run the gamut from old to new, big to small
• Some use old technology, and some use new
• Some have full sprinkler protection, whereas others have none
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Case Example: Jail Fire in Mitchell County, North Carolina
• A recent fire in 2002 at the Mitchell County, North Carolina, jail killed eight inmates
• This was a 1950s-era facility that required the manual opening of doors
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Starting of Fires
• Some jail fires start accidentally, but others are intentionally set by the inmates
• Several fires over the years have involved the use of polyurethane foam in a padded cell
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Questions to Ask
• Does the building have a sprinkler or smoke control system?
• Does it have smoke barriers?
• Are the inmates evacuated from the building?
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Museums and Libraries
• Recent fires
• 1986 Los Angeles Library fire
• Holocaust museum in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 2003
• Biblical Arts Center Museum in Dallas in 2005
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Fire Suppression System
• Not always available
• Some institutions rejected sprinklers as causing too much water damage
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Life Safety
• The primary concern of fire fighters
• Many museums and libraries have magnetic door locks
• These are illegal
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Preincident Plan
• Will assist greatly when a fire occurs
• Ensure that the plan includes salvage operation details
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Library Stacks
• Libraries are the original high stack storage buildings
• Large main libraries have multi-level stack areas
• Guarantees the spread of fire and destruction of the books
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Nightclub Fires
• Case examples:• 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire
in Boston• 1990 Happyland Social
Club arson fire in the Bronx, New York
• 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island
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Within the Club
• Patrons who are not fully aware of their surroundings
• Clubs are often overcrowded
• Locked egress doors complete the potential for a disaster
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Old, Worn-Out Structures
• Many clubs are located in such structures
• Many of these existing clubs are not required to retrofit sprinklers
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Office Buildings
• Come in the five types of construction
• Are large and small
• Are high-rise or low-rise
• Now built in the open office plan
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Fire Spread
• Fire in a compartmentalized space is much different than a fire in an open office plan
• Case example: One Meridian Plaza high-rise fire in Philadelphia
• Case example: Denver fire fighter killed in low-rise office building
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Open Area Structures
• Construction: often of wood, or with an exposed wood plank roof
• Such a building should be fully sprinklered
• Objection to sprinklers in a decorative wood structure is understandable
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Non-Sprinklered Building
• Try to keep out the kindling
• Minimize the minor light combustible structures or elements that can ignite the whole building
• Small structures should have sprinkler protection
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Parking Garages
• May be partially or totally above grade and open to the atmosphere
• All garage areas under buildings should be sprinklered
• Dry standpipes mean it will be slow to get water to the nozzles of your hose lines
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Restaurants
• Common fire location is in the kitchen
• Model building codes do not require a fire-rated separation between the kitchen and the dining area
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Cooking Hood Extinguishing Systems
• Author Corbett’s experience with them has not been all positive
• Several of the systems have failed
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Preincident Planning
• Note location of the utilities
• Make note of the use of propane
• Case example: The use of propane in a New Jersey shore restaurant where patrons were forced to break windows to escape the fire
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Schools: Building Code Regulations (1 of 2)
• Shaped by the 1958 Our Lady of Angels fire in Chicago
• Led to better and more frequent fire drills
• Led to lower and more accessible windows for escape
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Schools: Building Code Regulations (2 of 2)
• Also led to:
• Abatement of open stairwells
• Alarm systems
• Fire-rated corridor and doors
11
Unique Features of Schools
• Corridor widths are much larger than normal
• Egress systems may be unusual
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Potential Issues
• Corridor lengths are particularly long
• Note special hazards such as woodworking and machine shops
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Single Family Homes
• The California Bungalow
• Popular all across the country
• Often there is no ridge beam in these homes
• The attic often contains a high fire load of stored materials
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The Cape Cod
• 1 ½-story home with a steep pitched roof
• Is a platform-framed structure
• Stairway to the second floor is near the front door
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The Ranch House
• Open interiors, large attics, and extended overhangs
• Spaced close together
• Often, there is a failure to place a detector in the attic
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The Split Level
• Top level usually contains the bedrooms
• The middle level, the dining room, living room, and kitchen
• The lower level, the recreation room and laundry room
• Platform-framed
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The Victorian
• Significant amounts of ornamentation
• Steep pitched roofs
• Balloon frame construction
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Taxpayers and Strip Malls
• Taxpayers
• Often of ordinary (Type III) construction
• Commonly one story in height with full or partial basements and common cocklofts or attic spaces
• Usually limited to 6 to 10 small stores
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Fire Spread in Taxpayers
• Is typically through the cockloft above all of the stores
• Movement of the structure below can cause the parapet to fall
• Hazards include the steel plates on the roof
• Rotted wood floors also dangerous
11
Strip Mall Characteristics
• Construction varies (may be Type II, III or V)
• Nearly all are one story • May or may not have basements; often
have common cockloft or attic spaces• 15 to 20 small stores and a large anchor
store or two• Greater store depth than in taxpayers
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Strip Mall Surroundings
• Parking lot can be helpful, but also can be detrimental
• Private hydrants must usually be used
• Delivery truck driveway may be poorly maintained
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Occupancy Types
• Variety of tenants
• Variety of hazards
• Fire-rated separation
• Fire walls
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Structural Fire Resistance
• Increase the allowable area by increasing the fire resistance of the structural members
• “Fireproof” the steel by applying a fire-resistive coating
• Large nightclubs require a higher level of structural fire resistance
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Sprinkler Systems
• Some building codes require automatic sprinklers for retail sales rooms larger than 12,000 square feet
• Others require sprinklers for mercantile fire areas larger than 12,000 square feet
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Facts to Know about Sprinkler Systems (1 of 2)
• The areas of the strip mall that are sprinklered
• Whether the system provides complete protection
• The type of system—wet or dry
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Facts to Know about Sprinkler Systems (2 of 2)
• The location(s) of the main riser control valve(s)
• The location of the fire department connection and the areas of the building it supplies
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Utilities
• Most modern strip malls have multiple utility meters/cutoffs
• The meters/cutoffs should be identified by “suite” number
• Note the location of the utility meter bank in your preincident plan
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Forcing Entry
• How you will gain access through the front and rear doors?
• Roll-down metal shutters
• Rear doors may have metal bars
• During your preincident visits, make sure doors are identified by number
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Firefighting Considerations
• Fire can spread readily from tenant space to tenant space
• A roof of solid wood joists
• A strip mall with steel bar-joists and a built-up roof
• Fires in wood truss voids
• You must get ahead of the fire
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Theaters
• Stages and Platforms• Stage has a proscenium arch
and wall, hanging curtains, drops, and scenery; lighting; and support rooms
• Platform is a raised area in a building where there are only lighting and sound effects
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Requirements for Stages (1 of 2)
• More extensive fire protection requirements than platforms
• A fire-resistant proscenium curtain
• Flame-resistant scenery
• Heat vents over the stage
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Requirements for Stages (2 of 2)
• Two-hour-rated separations between the stage and appurtenant rooms
• Sprinkler protection
• Class III standpipe
• Case example: 1903 fire in the Iroquois Theater in Chicago
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Warehouses (1 of 2)
• Huge concentrations of fuel
• Tremendous dollar values
• Few employees per unit of area
• Failure to segregate extra-hazardous materials such as flammable liquids
• Failure to raise the bottom layer of stock above the floor
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Warehouses (2 of 2)
• Vulnerability to arson
• Failure of management to give attention
• Inadequate fire protection, either in initial design or in maintenance
• High rack storage
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Pallets
• Lift truck allows stock to stacked on pallets
• Pallet storage system provides as much as 36 times the surface area as boxes stacked solid
• Idle pallet storage is dangerous
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Shelving
• Creates miniature floors
• Case example: An estimated $14 million loss occurred in a rack storage warehouse in Kernersville, North Carolina, in March 1981
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NFPA 13: Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems
• Fire Department Connection (FDC) used to be optional
• NFPA 13 now requires the connection except for systems of 20 sprinklers or less
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Modern Rack Storage Warehouses
• Now found across the country
• Noncombustible construction
• The size can be unlimited
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Merchandise
• Handled by mechanical equipment
• Operation is fully or partially automated
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Rack Storage Warehouse Fire Resistance
• Like a multi-storied building without the fire resistance provided by even the poorest floor
• Early suppression fast response (ESFR) sprinklers can suppress a fire without in-rack sprinklers
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Dry Storage of Boats
• Special type of rack storage warehouse
• Stacks boats several levels high in open or partially enclosed rack structures
• Boats are of combustible fiberglass, and many contain fuel
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Warehouse Concerns
• Modern contents of warehouses are increasingly higher-hazard materials
• Automatic sprinkler systems that are adequate for the job as installed can be defeated by changes in the operation and storage patterns of the warehouse
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The Building
• If a building is concrete, it is inherently noncombustible
• Building is not inherently fire resistive
• Concrete T-beam roofs
• Conventional metal deck built-up roof
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Static Defenses: Fire Walls and Fire Doors (1 of 2)
• Fire walls in steel structures
• Probably are not free standing
• Offer passive fire protection as long as no openings exist
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Static Defenses: Fire Walls and Fire Doors (2 of 2)
• Solid masonry wall parapeted through the roof is the most dependable fire barrier, but may be decorative or pierced
• Combined elements may not function together effectively
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Dynamic Defenses: Automatic Sprinkler Protection
• Unparalleled record of suppression or control of incipient fires
• Record cannot be taken as an indication of what can happen in a high or dense storage warehouse
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Failure in a Sprinkler System
• Early distortion and collapse of the steel roof from which the sprinkler system is suspended
• Exacerbated by the exposure presented by a fire in stored pallets
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Fire Hazards Growing
• Fixed oscillating nozzles may be used
• Such systems used for large lumber piles and refineries
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Foam System Protection
• Some sprinkler systems deliver low expansion foam
• Used for flammable liquid fires
• Case use: The Chicago Tribune’s rolled-paper warehouse
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Attitudes: Management
• Unlikely that management is fully familiar with the details of serious fires
• Case example: Smithsonian Institution
• Case example: Warehouses holding what they were not designed to hold
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Fire Department Actions
• Initial planning and plan review
• Inspection of construction
• Routine and special inspections
• Regular liaison with the warehouse manager
• Adequate planning for fire suppression
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Preplanning
• Liaison officer disseminates information to all who should have it
• Warehouse manager should designate a specific senior subordinate to maintain relationship with the fire department liaison officer
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On the Fire Ground
• Watch for these collapses or failures
• Combustible metal deck roof fires
• Pretensioned concrete T-beams
• Truss roof
• Connections of heavy timber roof
• Tilt-slab walls, outward and inward
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Racks
• May be erected across the openings at the far end of aisles
• May make dead-end aisles
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Fire Fighter Access Doors
• Should be every 100 feet in a high-piled stock warehouse
• The doors should be opened/forced early in the fire to provide emergency egress for fire fighters
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Solid Rack Shelves
• Garment making generates huge amounts of combustible scraps
• Case example: Triangle Shirtwaist fire (New York, 1912)
• Misunderstanding about unsprinklered shelving
• Sprinkler spray blocked by shelves
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Ventilation
• Better to close up the building and let the sprinklers do the job, or to vent it and attempt a combined attack?
• Case example: Smoke removal fans for a fire in a walk-in dumpster
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Handline Operations
• “Follow the hose back to safety if lost”
• Hose line fed from an interior hose outlet is not a lifeline
• If interior outlets are used, lifelines should be strung to the exterior from the outlet
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Personal Safety
• All planning should place the safety of fire fighters first
• No one else is going to take care of it
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Summary (1 of 3)
• Occupancy influences building construction
• Combustible multiple dwellings include garden apartments, modern row and townhouses and similar structures
• Hospitals and nursing homes have numerous non-ambulatory people
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Summary (2 of 3)
• Jail and prison inmates rely on staff and fire fighters for evacuation
• Houses of worship span the five basic types of construction and can present a myriad of challenges for fire fighters
• Office buildings can be built using any of the five types of construction
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Summary (3 of 3)
• Nightclubs are typically overcrowded and occupant judgment may be impaired
• Warehouse rack storage has brought major fire problems to Anyplace, USA
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