DEFEND-IN-PLACE FIREFIGHTING STRATEGY DOES NOT WORK!
City Council of New York City should hold hearings and propose legislation to require the management of all high rise office buildings to conduct a total evacuation of all occupants. The time it takes for total evacuation of all occupants should be recorded.
GET THE PEOPLE OUT BEFORE THE FLOORS COLLAPSE City Council of New York City should hold hearings and propose legislation requiring the evacuation of all occupants from a high rise office building to be accomplished within the maximum time a floor in the building can resist fire. For example, when a floor of a high rise office building has a 3 hour fire resistive rating evacuation of all occupants should be accomplished within 3 hours. If the floor fire resistive rating is less than 3 hours, for example a floor may have a fire resistive rating of 2 hour or one hour. Total evacuation of all occupants should be carried out within this floor fire resistive time limit.
GET THE FIREFIGHTERS OUT BEFORE THE FLOORS COLLAPSE City Council of New York City should hold hearings and propose legislation requiring fire ground commanders to cease interior operations in unoccupied high rise office buildings before three hours of burning when a building has a fire resistive floor rating of 3 hours. When the floor is rated for less than 3 hours. for example floors may have a 2 or one hour fire resistive rating, Interior firefighting should end before this fire resistive time limit. Exterior,defensive firefighting operations may be directed by the fire commanders with firefighters operatng hose lines at a safe distance or from adjoining buildings or helcopter or robots.
Steel columns, girders and floor beams should be encased in masonry fire retarding material. Spray-on fire retarding is ineffective. Post fire investigations reveals the spray on fire retarding has scaled off and steel beams. Concrete and steel floor slabs on the floor above sag and crack allowing smoke and flame spread.
Lightweight bar joists should not be used to support floors in high-rise buildings. Full scale fire testing, by the National Fire Protection Association has shown unprotected open bar joist steel bar joist fail after five or ten minutes of fire exposure.
For life safety in high-rise buildings bring back the smoke proof tower( fire tower). This smoke proof tower allows people to escape fire in a smoke free stairway.
Masonry walls should enclose stair and elevator shaft ways. A large caliber firefighting hose stream can penetrate sheet rock walls (plasterboard) enclosing stair and elevator shaft enclosure walls.
Heating ventilation and air condition HVAC should be provided by unit system serving only one or two floors. Central air system serving 10 or 20 floors creates have duct systems that penetrate fire rated floors, walls, partitions, and ceilings. Smoke spreads throughout ducts of central HVAC systems.
The framework of high-rise buildings should be skeleton steel framing, not bearing wall construction.
. Increase the thickness of concrete in floor construction. The current practice of having three or four inches of concrete over corrugated steel fails during most serious high rise fires and must be replaced.
Automatic sprinklers should protect all high-rise office buildings. Firefighters can extinguish approximately 2500 square foot of fire with one hose line. Two hose teams may quench 5,000 square feet of fire.
Federal state and Port Authority buildings should comply with New York City building codes and in some cases should exceed them. Building codes are minimum standards.
There should be a phase III elevator in all high-rise office buildings. A phase III elevator is enclosed by one-hour fire retarding material and is used by firefighters and disabled persons during a fire.
All new and existing high-rise office buildings should be retrofitted with automatic sprinklers. There should be zero tolerance for non-sprinklered office buildings.
High-rise office building should conduct one full-scale evacuation each year.
Vincent Dunn, Deputy Chief FDNY (Ret.)