HIDING THE SOLUTION AS CHILDREN BURNED More than a hundred years ago a solution to the out-of-control and deadly

building fire was developed. This solution to the fire that so often kills young children was proven to be 99.9 percent effective at preventing fire deaths decades ago. Hundreds of thousands of fire deaths could have been avoided. But those you trusted to protect you from fire betrayed you. Your protectors lied to you. They killed your children by the thousands even as you were paying them to protect you. You, who have lost children to home fires, know that their deaths were 99.9 percent avoidable. You, who have lost loved ones in the Station Nightclub fire in Rhode Island a few years ago and the thousands of deadly building fires before, know that your loved ones died because you were been betrayed. Your government betrayed you. Your fire chiefs betrayed you. Your fire code making organization betrayed you. Underwriters Laboratories betrayed you. You have been had. The story is told below.

I attach a report by T. Seddon Duke dated 1959. He cites data from the American District Telegraph company, a central station that electrically monitored sprinkler systems, fire detection systems and burglar alarms. I highlighted the data revealing that the electrically monitored sprinkler system had produced a satisfactory performance of 99.98 percent of fire control over the prior 34 years. A 99.98 percent of fire control was extremely close to a one hundred percent elimination of serious fires. During 1988, a book by H.W. Marryatte, an Australian Fire protection Engineer, was published entitled, Fire: A Century of Automatic Sprinkler Protection in Australia and New Zealand 1886-1986. The total number of fire deaths within sprinklered buildings in these two countries during that one hundred year period was 11. That was slightly more than one death every ten years. If that is not a near total elimination of fire deaths by sprinklers, what is? However, that protection was deliberately and cleverly denied the public by those who control the fire codes and policies. This was no different than if the medical profession found a cure to cancer a hundred years ago but kept it secret. More than 50 years ago I came to the conclusion that the way that this nation dealt with building fires was archaic and wrong, and that out-of-control fires and fire deaths could be very close to 100 percent eliminated. It has been a long and nasty battle to change a fire bureaucracy that locked in on their methods of fire control during the 1800s. But I am now certain that what I started will continue and eventually the fire deaths within buildings will be near eliminated. After these many years of work and much abuse for my work, it is now a certainty that what I started is becoming the norm. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and Underwriters Laboratories (UL) became the non-government law makers (via fire codes) for the fire industry. The NFPA and UL essentially defined the products and systems that could be marketed to Americans and American businesses. And they defined how fire related products and systems must be designed, installed and certified. They gained these powers to control American fire commerce with the help of the fire insurance industry. The insurers profited from fires and needed a great abundance of fires to maximize the cash flow through its system. A virtual tidal wave of dollars passed into the insuring system (because of the enormous number of fires). But, due to underwriting (plus a

special power granted by Congress to insurers to legally price fix) perhaps only half of the cash flow ever exited the system. Being able to set rates and calculate the annual losses with accuracy, the insurers profits were linked to the losses; the greater the losses the greater the cash flow, the greater the retentions, the greater the profits. This scam was based on deliberately denying protection to the public, thus guaranteeing a continuity of an enormous cash flow into the system while legally price fixing to maximize the profits. The very corrupt code maker, the NFPA cooperated by creating a code to control the sprinkler system so that nearly all buildings were devoid of protection and therefore ripe to burn. Fire was the business of the fire insurance business. So, with the help of the NFPA/UL controllers; the insurers guaranteed that the most perfect and affordable protection (that potentially could eliminate building fire deaths) shall not be allowed to be marketed in the United States. And, with regard to those who wonder why the government has not corrected this wanton destruction of human life, I can readily explain it. The answer is those who are powerful and in charge of fire safety within our government have been for sale. Those who profit from fire know how to deal with the federal bureaucrats of fire. This regulatory corruption probably has caused more than one million fire deaths and injuries during the reign of NFPA and UL. During 1954 (5 years prior to the Seddon Duke report) I had convinced the management of the company I worked for, Seagram Distillers, to create a fire research program including all the major distillers. This research allowed me to thoroughly investigate the design of fire sprinkler systems and to also investigate the methods by which those who profited from fire were preventing any major reduction in fires. The enormous number of building fires in America was creating hundreds of billions of dollars in profits and funding. Those who benefited from fire feared any fire solution that could reduce fire losses by even 50 percent, let alone 99 percent. The business of fire needed fires, hundreds of thousands of fires every year. I concluded even before I saw Dukes report that sprinklers could be close to the perfect solution to fire. The early fire cannot yet kill but it is easy to kill it. The early fire is like a tiger cub, easy to kill. But let it grow large and it will easily kill you. Water spray is the perfect fire killer. By the 1970s I had created an economical life safety system for places of assembly including hospitals, hotels, high rises, schools, apartment houses and virtually all other buildings where many people would work or sleep. I also developed the technical criteria for a one and two family residential sprinkler system which was incorporated into a California Residential Sprinkler Code. The essential criterion for a residentuial system was for it to be able to control a home fire with the amount of water normal to a home. The NFPA conducted research that was falsified to justify a water demand several times greater than a home would have; thus the NFPA placed an enormous financial burden on the residential sprinkler. This has dramatically curtailed these installations within homes. I promoted and pushed through to adoption a national fire code for a fire detection system for homes, the first ever created anywhere. At the time I realized that it would take many years for all homes to become sprinkler protected. During the intervening years it would make sense to install fire detection systems, or individual detectors in homes to at least warn of a fire while it was still a tiny, not yet a deadly fire. Warned promptly when a fire first occurred, all occupants

would be able to escape without injury. And, if a small hose with water fog nozzle was installed in say the laundry room, why a three second shot of water would likely not only save the people but the house as well. Unfortunately, the Product of Combustion (POC) device manufacturers and the NFPA gutted that standard. Reliable fire detectors were replaced with the POC detector. The POC device was a scam, a defective device least likely to warn of a fire in a reliable manner. But it would false alarm frequently to non fires such as toasting bread; thus the consumer believed it to be reliable. The device was proven to be unable to detect real (visible) smoke. But the manufacturers lied; they claimed it would detect all fires even before you could see smoke or flames. That fast! The NFPA published the performance lies for many years. Finally the fire officials across America bought the performance lies because they did not believe that the NFPA would be lying to them. Then, the manufacturers of the device that cannot detect smoke renamed it a smoke detector. By any name it is still a killer and has been declared so by a NY Court of law. Fundamentally, I was creating properly engineered protection systems for all building types. The systems were fire detection systems relying on fast manual suppression or detection with automatic fire suppression. The important thing was that these systems would be installed within the building where the fire would occur. This was in opposition to full dependence on the remote fire departments. The remote firefighters would usually arrive at the fire site only after the fire was out of control. While they claim the average response time to a burning home is 5 minutes, the true measure is the free burn time; the time from the appearance of the first flame until firefighters actually enter the building with water spray being applied to the fire. The free burn time is more likely ten minutes to more than a half hour. Those who are not yet out on the front lawn when the first engine arrives probably will be coming out horizontally. The conclusion: To properly protect human life the protection must be located where the fire originates. To accomplish that, fire technology had to be modernized to become affordable even for homes. That goal has been a major part of my 50 year campaign to make America fire safe. I am enclosing a report on the life safety system I designed for the 1.2 million square foot Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas. This system was bid and installed at approximately 35 cents a square foot whereas the prior bid (of a basement only system), designed to the NFPA code had been bid at $2.88 a square foot. This was approximately a 90 percent savings per square foot over the NFPA design. Because my system was installed throughout the facility, the construction cost was reduced by over 5 million dollars. All of this was confirmed by the State Architect of Kansas (see the report). Thus I proved that sprinklers, properly engineered, can reduce costs rather than add to the cost of fire safety. Note that this fire suppression system could terminate the early fire 99.98 percent of the time and also be so cost effective as to actually save money. Obviously, if it was less expensive to protect, the public would protect. Protection guaranteeing near zero losses would become the norm. The one thing that your protectors feared most greatly was the elimination of the fire problem. In 1972 I was nominated for the McGraw Hill - Engineering News Record magazine with about 25 other engineers (from throughout the entire world) for the Engineer of the Year Award. This was for the development of the Patton Life Safety System. Contrast this with the

recognition of my work by the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE). An engineer by the name of John Foehl plagiarized my research claiming that he developed the Life Safety System. The SFPE published his dishonest report (Fire Technology - August, 1973). Why? I suppose because the SFPE engineers were designing only NFPA code specified systems and probably they feared something new that they were not familiar with. By eliminating me in their world they were casting aside an engineered system for what we call a cook book system; a do it strictly by the rules system. This dishonesty by an engineering society is worth reporting because it illustrates the degree to which those who depend on the NFPA for their expertise will go to destroy something new that they fear. Mr. Foehl was not a threat to take their NFPA security blanket away from them. They say, Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. When I built a better fire solution, the fire experts doubled their efforts to destroy me and my engineering works. A few years ago I made two trips to Australia and presented my ideas over there. Great changes soon began to occur. Adrian Butler and Karl Westwell created the World Fire safety Foundation and began to use the Internet as the educational system for fire safety. The truth about fire solutions and fire corruptions can no longer be silenced. The U.S. fire establishment and our government agencies do not have the means to silence people in foreign nations or to kill the internet. With the WFSF pushing the truth in beautifully crafted web sites the Fire Ghouls of America are unable to prevent their lies from being exposed (see www.TheWorldFireSafetyFoundation.org). After new and honest testing of the phony smoke detectors were conducted in Australia, the new testing and investigations of this fraud have gravitated back to America. Here are some of the areas where the new investigations into the smoke detector fraud are occurring: Australia, New Zealand, Vermont, Boston, Ohio, South Carolina, Indiana, Texas, Tennessee and expanding. I say that when the truth starts coming out and the ghouls of fire can no longer silence the dissent, the changes will evolve. Of course, with more than 300 billion dollars a year generated by fire, there will remain much opposition to the potential major reductions in fire. But they are now fighting a losing battle. And, any investigation into the smoke detector fraud is an investigation into the NFPA schemes to guarantee the continuity of fire because fire losses generate profits. The smoke detector fraud is but one part of the effort to prevent fire control operations that will precede the response of the public fire departments. Built-in protection will terminate the early fire, near 100 percent of the time, before it becomes large and a killer. True, the real solutions to fire are still being opposed and progress is still being slowed. But, when solutions have been developed and are in the public domain, and when a body of specialists has embraced the concepts, the further development of the solutions may be slowed but not killed. My allies, who are presently challenging the rigid and corrupt controls that have destroyed so many lives, are becoming ever more vocal. I was the one person who prominently challenged the corruption these many years. So, I feel it is only right that I take some credit for the advancements so far made. I look at it this way: REDUCED FIRE DEATHS CAME ABOUT

The following quote is from page 1-5 of the fourteenth edition of the Fire Protection Handbook of the NFPA, dated January 1976, According to the estimates of the NFPA Fire Analysis Department, the annual fire death toll in the United States has averaged about 12,000 per year over the last 20 years. Note that for 20 years there was no significant reduction in fire deaths and, (with population adjustments) I suspect this stagnation dated all the way back to the creation of the NFPA during the 19th century. Because this data included non building fires including automobile crash fires, the annual death toll due to building fires was in the 8,000 - 9,000 range. In recent years the annual U.S. fire death toll due to building fires has fallen to the 3,000 to 4,000 range in spite of an increase in population. Thus, prior to my efforts to improve fire technology and apply this technology to the protection of life within buildings, the U.S. fire deaths per year were more than double the present toll. Some of the reductions in fire deaths since the 1970s have been due to other factors. But, there is no doubt that many of the fire deaths and injuries that did not occur were due to my works. I believe that it would be reasonable to conclude that my five decade long effort to reform the fire regulatory system has saved lives well into the thousands. And, historically, there have been about five serious injuries for every fire death. Is it not ironic that I have received an enormous amount of opposition, abuse and harassment from those who are paid well to protect humans from fire? EVIL WINS WHEN GOOD PEOPLE DO NOTHING.

www.TheWorldFireSafetyFoundation.org www.Firecrusade.com www.AmericasHolocaust.org

RICHARD M. PATTON, FIRE PROTECTION ENGINEER AUTHOR, THE AMERICAN HOME IS A FIRE TRAP THE CRUSADE AGAINST FIRE DEATHS

rmpatton@surewest.net