FAA Plans Fire Test Lab
The federal government’s largest enclosed fire test laboratory will be built during the next 18 months at the Federal Aviation Agency’s National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center in Pomona, N. J. The structure will have two wings with a total of 17,000 square feet of floor space.
The only larger fully-enclosed fire test facility in the United States is the Factory Mutual Test Center in W. Glocester, R. I.
The laboratory will be used for fires under controlled conditions in aircraft up to the size of jumbo jets and will accelerate research into reducing deaths from fires, a major cause of fatalities in survivable aircraft accidents.