NO.
16
MODERN BUILDING FIRE SAFETY
0 1971 Patton Fire Protection & Research, Inc.
The following article is a copy of a talk I
presented on April 17, 1971 at a symposium
entitled, "Dimensions in Fire Protection —
Fire Problems in the Modern Building", held
at the Center for Occupational Education,
Jersey City State College. Dr. Robert G.
Kahrmann, Jr., Assistant Director, Center for
Occupational Education Jersey City State
College, conceived of the idea of a fire
protection seminar in the New York City area,
and deserves much of the credit for its
success. Other sponsoring organizations
included the Society of Fire Protection
Engineers (New York Chapter), Building
Officials Association of New Jersey, and the
New Jersey State Fire Prevention Association.
In the eyes of many people the high rise building
represents a special fire problem. I take exception to this
viewpoint. I do NOT consider the high rise building to
represent a difficult fire problem. I do NOT believe the
protection of life in the high rise building is a problem
that presents unusual difficulties.
In my opinion, it is not the high rise building that is
the serious fire problem at all: The REAL problem is
FIRE PROTECTION ITSELF.
The current existing fire technology that is applied to
the high rise building, and to all other buildings as well, is
not a valid technology. This is the REAL problem we are
applying an improper and often irrelevant fire protection
technology to buildings. and the result is that we are
doing an extremely poor job of controlling fire in all
buildings.
The reason why the high rise building appears to be a
very special case is that the building is bigger and taller
than most buildings and therefore the fire protection
flaws which exist in all buildings are dramatized in the
high rise building. The flaws and inaccuracies of our
existing fire technology that are often glossed over or
swept under the rug, in the case of building design in
general, sometimes become GLARING FAULTS in the
spotlight of a very dramatic high rise building fire.
Let us not forget that during the period of time when
five or ten or perhaps twenty people die in high rise office
building fires we have perhaps three to six thousand
people dying from fire in their own homes, and it might
be well to keep in mind that most of these are children.
We are not going to solve the high rise building fire
problem, or the fire problem of any building where there
is direct exposure to life, until we accurately define what
the problem is. The problem is one of improper
application of fire protection technology, rather than
improper architectural concept. The concept of a
skyscraper is a perfectly valid and legitimate concept.
The concept of a very tall building is a good concept.
The concept of a windowless building or a building
containing fixed sash is a good concept. As a matter of
fact they are both excellent concepts. With the high price
of land in a central city tall buildings make sense. With the
air pollution problems of most cities a building that has a
clean air supply and is isolated from the external
environment makes sense. The thing that does not make
sense is the application of an 1860 or 1890 concept of fire
protection to this modern building design.
In the 1860's or there about the concept of the so
called fireproof building evolved. The theory behind the
fireproof building is that it is possible to construct a
building so as to be inherently firesafe. This concept of
fire design was as wrong in the 1860's as it is today. The
only reason it appears to be less valid today than it was in
the 1860's is that we have become more efficient at
building taller buildings and the basic flaws of improper
fire protection are more apparent today because of it.
There is no way to construct a building so as to be
inherently firesafe. As a matter of fact the building itself
represents the minor portion of the fire risk. It is the
contents of the building that are most likely to be ignited,
burn most rapidly, and produce the greater portion of the
heat and toxic gases.
A 100 year effort to build an inherently safe structure
has produced a structure with all of the characteristics of
an excellent furnace. It is possible today to contain a
raging fire within the fireproof structural shell for 4 hours
without destroying the structural shell. If the intent of
our fire technology is to save buildings then we have done
an excellent job. But if it is our intent to save the
occupants as well as the structure, then our fire
technology could not be more misdirected.
Four hours of structural fire resistance offers little help
to the man who is trapped inside with the content fire.
The content fire is the fire that kills man. Yet we are
establishing elaborate regulations controlling the structure
and we are ignoring the contents.
We assume that we are doing something wonderful
when we require the materials that go into the structures
to be slow burning, fire retardent or self-extinguishing.
But such classifications have no meaning when the
materials are placed in the environment of a content fire.
At the elevated temperatures of the content fire many so
called non-hazardous structural materials will burn just
beautifully.
So we have a structural fire problem that represents
perhaps 10% of the fire problem as far as human life is
concerned. And this is where we direct our efforts —
toward the structural portion of the fire problem. As far
as life is concerned probably 90% of the problem is
associated with the contents — yet there is no viable plan
at present to solve the contents fire problem.
The situation could be likened to a man sitting within a
furnace with a pail of gasoline on his lap. We recognize the
problem and then attempt to solve it by putting another
layer of insulation on the exterior furnace wall. Such
solutions benefit the furnace, but how about the fellow
inside?
Because we ignore the contents our structural fire
systems continue to fail to protect human life, and
following each failure there are meetings to plan
additional STRUCTURAL solutions, which also will fail
the need of a man who is exposed to the content fire. So
as year follows year and disaster follows disaster we put
more and more regulations on the structure, and force the
price of construction ever upward. As the schemes to
make the structure inherently safe become more complex
this requires the engineers to devote greater attention to
the ever more complex structure: and this takes his
attention further and further from the true fire problem
the exposure of man to the internal content fire.
For example, there is much talk these days about using
computers to compute the path of the smoke through
buildings and setting up elaborate systems to prevent the
smoke from doing what smoke always does — spread.
Such plans are also doomed to failure until we
recognize a fundamental truth: that there is no
economically practical way of controlling the spread of
smoke until we first control the fire. When we control the
content fire, which is the significant fire, we also control
the smoke problem (or at least bring this problem to such
dimensions that other controls can have validity.) In
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addition, when we control the content fire we control the
structural fire. Finally, when we control the content fire
we terminate the direct threat to human life.
Now the question is, how do we control the content
fire?
The complete elimination of combustible contents
would be an EXCELLENT solution — IF it was possible
to completely eliminate combustibles. It isn't, so that's
not the solution.
Fire proofing the steel protects the steel. But not the
people. That's not the solution. Subdividing the building
into fireproof sections and permitting the fire to freely
develop within any one section is not the answer. This
solution seems to me to be very similar to the policy of
controlling a riot by giving the rioters a section of the city
to hold a riot in.
Controlling the smoke without controlling the fire is a
fantasy, not a solution.
An enclosed exit stairway cannot be a solution because
the content fire, if not controlled, is quite likely to block
the stairway.
There's only one really pertinent solution to the
content fire problem. It is the solution developed by the
earliest man which has come down to us over the ages, but
which seems to have gotten lost in this age: of
technological confusion. The solution is to put the fire
out. Putting the fire out promptly, efficiently and
decisively is the only valid fire protection solution. It is
the only solution that can make sense to the man who is
contained within the fireproof structural shell and who
does not possess the fire retardent qualities of the building
materials. Put the fire out: That is your ultimate fire
solution. We must have modern systems of prompt and
certain fire suppression that are in keeping with the needs
of modern buildings and modern man.
The fire problem of a high rise building becomes a
monumental fire problem only when we fail to extinguish
the fire when it is small. When we permit it to become
large and to get out of control then a fire in a high rise
building is a special category. But if we put it out
promptly and decisively there is no big problem with fire
in the high rise building.
Why isn't the concept of immediate fire suppression
applied to the high rise building? Basically there are two
reasons.
First where life safety has been concerned the basic
thrust of fire protection has not been toward
instantaneously suppressing the fire, rather it has been
toward developing the inherently fire safe structure. For
100 years we have been trying to build the so called
fireproof building in such a manner that it is inherently
safe, but this is an impossible task because it is the
contents of the building that is the problem.
The second reason the fire suppression concept has not
been applied to high rise buildings, and other similar
buildings, is that the sprinkler system which was
developed in the 19th century as a system for protecting
industrial property, has not yet been converted to be a
system for protecting human life. The sprinkler system
installed today is almost identical to the sprinkler system
that was installed in 1896 and its application to high rise
buildings and similar buildings where life, not industrial
property is to be protected is very limited.
If the 100 years that we have spent trying to develop
an inherently safe structure had been devoted to
developing a really first class sprinkler system directed
toward protecting human life,there would be no fire
problem in high rise buildings today.
The solution to the high rise building fire problem is to
do what should have been done many years ago. We must
develop a method of promptly suppressing the content
fire using the technology and knowledge we have today to
the greatest extent possible. The modern building
demands modern fire suppression systems. We also need a
de-emphasis of the structural protection requirements so
that the net cost of construction, including the
suppression system, is at least held constant and
preferably reduced.
There is one other thing that I consider to be
extremely important for life safety in the high rise
building and that is that we should recognize the
elevator, not the stairway, as the proper and only practical
exitway for the upper floors. Elevators can be made safe
by doing the following. Every floor above the first should
be separated into two zones with a fire partition of
modest fire resistance, say one-half hour to one hour.
Such a partition can be built into the partition
arrangement on each floor at very little or no extra cost.
Doorways in the partition can be held open and closed
automatically on detection of smoke. Passenger elevators
should be on one side and one or more large freight
elevators on the other. Thus, no matter where the fire is
located there will be a zone of safety to wait on the
elevators running through the non involved zone, and this
will also give the fire department a base from which to
attack the fire if it is not completely extinguished by the
suppression system.
In conclusion, I reiterate my belief that the high rise
building does not represent an unusually difficult fire
problem, that it only appears to be a difficult fire problem
because we are applying solutions which are not
specifically oriented toward the basic fire problems of this
building.