Re: FW: Porsches Lost to a Building Fire
From: Charles Perry (charlescarolina-sound.com)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 13:52:53 -0700 (PDT)
Great info! Love when The List makes me smarter...


-----Original Message-----
From: Fellippe Galletta [mailto:fellippe.galletta [at] gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2014 12:45 PM
To: Charles Perry
Cc: The FerrariList
Subject: Re: [Ferrari] FW: Porsches Lost to a Building Fire

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

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