Ch 12 Specific Occupancy Details and Hazards

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

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Objectives (2 of 2)

• Identify the unique details and hazards associated with specific occupancies

• Understand how occupancy specifics affect firefighting operations

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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

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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

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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

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Individual Living Units

• Usually confined to one floor

• Some are multi-floor units

• Some structures may have both one floor and multi-floor units

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Balconies

• Customary in many apartments

• Combustible or noncombustible construction

• Cantilevered balconies can collapse in fires

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Gable Roof Attics

• These extend over the entire structure

• Attic fire barriers are frequently not effective because they have been compromised

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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

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Interior Construction

• Is almost totally of wood

• Multiplies the fire extension potential through the voids inherent in combustible construction

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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

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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

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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

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Building Location

• Map drill

• Drill identifies gullies and fences

• Building owners should be encouraged to provide lettering and numbering on buildings

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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

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Water Supply

• Hydrants often on private mains

• Should be checked periodically

• Older complexes often have undersized mains

• Have the owner conduct a flow test

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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?

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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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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