A recent house fire in the village of Carpentersville, Illinois, prompted local reporters to look at the issue of fire dynamics in modern suburban homes.
According to a report in the Daily Herald, a fierce August fire stands out to Fire Chief John Skillman because it was aggressive and produced copious black smoke, behavior that fire experts say is common with modern residential fires.
The number of house fires that occur nationally has been on a slow decline, but they burn faster, hotter and more dangerously than ever before, according to John Drengenberg, consumer safety director at Northbrook-based Underwriters Laboratories.
In the 1970s, a person had an average of 17 minutes to escape after a smoke alarm went off before conditions became too dangerous to survive, but now, according to Drengenberg, that number has dropped to three to four minutes.
Read more HERE.
Hat tip to Fire Engineering Technical Editor Glenn Corbett for the link.
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