PREVENTION POINTS TO PONDER

June 1, 1994
Fire Engineering Staff

PREVENTION POINTS TO PONDER

The fire prevention bureau situations depicted in these photographs offer a number of points to ponder. We’ll give you a few, in no particular order of importance. Write to us with your own considerations, and we’ll publish them a future issue.

An all-loo-familiar sight: a residential smoke detector without a battery. In this case, an apartment dweller who had removed the battery fell asleep while smoking. When he woke up, his chair was on fire and the fire was spreading to the rest of the room. He quickly ran from his apartment, yelling to the people living upstairs to get out. Unfortunately, two women didn’t heed his warning. (Photos by author.)The end result: a pair of stretchers that await their charges—the bodies of two women who died in the apartment above the apartment of origin. Fellow residents pleaded with them to leap to safety from their second-floor patio balcony, but they fled back into the apartment as flames chased them inside to their deaths. Their own smoke detector, found after the fire, had a battery—a battery that wasn't connected. This Fire Prevention Week fire reminds us of the need to maximize Change Your Clock. Change Your Battery public education efforts.Section 5-4.4.1.1 of NFPA 30. The Flammable and Combustible Liquids Code (1993 edition), requires a separation distance of 25 feet between an unloading point and an aboveground tank—and for good reason. Arriving firefighters were confronted with a gasoline tank vehicle involved in fire, eight feet away from an aboveground gasoline tank into which gasoline was being unloaded. The transfer pump on the tractor of the tank vehicle had begun sparking, causing the truck driver to run. A fire ensued, in which the tractor as well as the first compartment of the tank vehicle became fully involved. Fortunately, most of the first compartment had been emptied. Yet incoming firefighters were met with a large fire.Responding firefighters noted the aboveground tank vent issuing flames, the paint burning off the side of the tank, a small diked area, as well as the tractor trailer fire previously mentioned. Quick action by firefighters prevented the aboveground tank from failing, and firefighters quickly suppressed the tank vehicle fire. Complying with NFPA 30. as referenced in the Standard Fire Prevention Code‘ and National Fire Prevention Code®, would have reduced the severe fire exposure to the aboveground tank. Remarkably, the Uniform Fire Code™ contains no specific distance to tank requirements for unloading operations.These two unlimited area buildings, as described in building codes such as the Uniform Building Code™, are built directly next to each other—with a property line right down the middle. Normally. 60 feet of clear, open yard from each building to a property line would be required—effectively 120 feet between two 100.000-plussquare-foot buildings. A fire doesn t respect property lines—it will cross from one building to the next. Such could be the case if sprinklers fail to contain a fire in either one of these two high-piled-stock warehouse stores.

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