Ferrari Mailing List: Re: FW: Porsches Lost to a Building Fire

[Fellippe Galletta (fellippe.galletta]

On 7/25/14, Charles Perry <charles [at] carolina-sound.com> wrote:
> Clearly they needed the expertise of our own Fellippe Galletta. Sadly, per
> the comments, current codes and inspection processes make it onerous to try
> to be preventive about such things...

I'm assuming there was no sprinkler system in the facility, as it
would have been noted if it didn't perform properly.

A system may or may not have been required. Then you have to factor in
the hazards, which an auto repair facility ranks about halfway up the
severity of hazard classifications, not a big deal most of the time.
The real kicker is tire storage which the article alludes to....and
while I haven't dealt with any tire storage personally in my work, I
know off hand it is one of the worst types of fires to deal with. It
is on par or worse than just about most flammable liquid storage,
Group A plastics, which are all pretty bad in their own right. The
problem with tires is that they are a nasty fire very resistant to
being extinguished, often "deep seated".

A lot of how bad tire storage fires can be depends on storage heights,
mounting configurations, quantities, etc. but the interesting thing is
that how something is "supposed" to be stored can very often have
little bearing in how it is actually stored in real life, and a
properly engineered system can be undermined because of user error.

Water supply can be an issue as well in general, especially if you are
in a remote area -- if you have lousy pressure from the municipal
water supply, you can always add a fire pump. But if you don't have
enough flow in GPM you'll need to add a water storage tank, which
costs money. If you figure between 1200-1800 GPM for 90-120 minutes, a
lot of water....

One way to "enforce" these sort of things is to have the property
insured by a good underwriter -- Willis, Chubb, XL for example. FM
Global is perhaps the best as they have their own performance criteria
that often exceeds building code and NFPA minimums. Codes care about
minimal compliance to protect the building structure and life safety
for occupants, insurance companies care about money -- property damage
and lawsuits. Owners care about money lost to damage too but only
after the fact, rarely before. ;-)

(An exception to this of course is anybody who owns/manages data
centers......you'll see a cost no object approach with these clients
as there is huge money involved when the servers are down).

You have the ability to supplement sprinkler water, with technologies
such as halogenated/inert gas clean agent suppression (FM200, NOVEC
1230, Inergen, the now defunct Halon 1301, etc), Carbon Dioxide, Dry
Chemical, Foam (AFFF, high expansion foam), etc. all with their unique
strengths and weaknesses.

The gases are good but you need a good seal and extended hold times
(won't help if garage doors are open for instance). CO2 is good too
but poses an asphyxiating hazard to occupants, and might also struggle
with hold times.

Dry chemical is strong but not an ideal residue to have on cars if you
can help it (although this is what you'll find in gas stations). Same
too for foam, although this is common in aircraft hangars.

It's one thing to extinguish a fire at all costs, but now you have to
be weary of not damaging precious goods at the same time, haha. I
spent about a year traveling with some fellow Engineers to different
Air Force reserve bases around the US dealing with the issue that a
false activation of high expansion foam on an open C5 or C17 would be
more expensive to deal with than fire damage! It was a reverse fire
protection engineering exercise, if you will.

It's not common to worry about protecting the good itself from damage
-- nobody cares about pallets of destroyed nail polish, or acetylene
cylinders. Just put out the fire and keep it moving. Naturally this
application with cars, artwork, etc is unique.

What it will ultimately come down to is fire prevention more than
suppression; housekeeping practices, liquid storage techniques, proper
drainage, etc. Some of this detailed in this short little data sheet
by FM, if anybody is interested:

http://www.fmglobal.com/fmglobalregistration/Vshared/FMDS0715.pdf

Another aspect which is often overlooked is to get the fire department
to the scene as fast as possible as they play a very critical role in
these types of fires. Manual pull station activation is one thing, but
after hours you need smoke detection. When seconds count, full
coverage smoke detection is a lot better than just relying on
waterflow activation through sprinklers (we could be talking about 1-2
minutes difference here). And if you want to take it up another notch,
spring for air aspirating (air sampling) smoke detection
("VESDA")......normal detectors sit back and wait for the smoke, air
sampling detection is constantly sniffing for it. These types of
detectors are also better suited to dealing with hostile air
environments than regular detectors.

The resources are there to mitigate these fire issues, just gotta want it.

Of all the building engineering disciplines (architectural, civil,
structural, mechanical, electrical), fire protection is the only one
that is an added cost with no benefit so long as a fire never occurs.
It's only natural that this one area is the one that gets overlooked,
ignored, underestimated, etc.

FG