This is kind of wordy (those who know me well, please stop snickering), but I thought I'd share it anyway. Thanks Mark for calling attention to that article; below is my correspondence to the writer.
To: Jason Ryan, The State Re: The Sofa Super Store Fire It appears that you were quoting others either directly or by composite in your article. However the statement, "Given the swiftness and ferocity of the furniture-fueled fire, officials speculated, the extra water might not have mattered" is patently inaccurate and an unfortunate blemish on an article that is otherwise well-written. I encourage you to do a follow-up article after researching this issue further. You will find that the "extra water" could and most certainly WOULD have contained or extinguished this fire in its incipient (formative) stage and that this catastrophe should have been avoided. The local building official made a judgmental error in allowing this occupancy to take over an old grocery store shell without a fire sprinkler retrofit. There are fire sprinklers designed SPECIFICALLY to control or extinguish this type of high challenge fire; one where foams and other plastics and synthetics are stored in fairly dense arrays that are spread out enough to allow oxygen to flow easily into the burning commodity. Full scale fire testing has repeatedly shown that high-density sprinkler systems are +95% effective at containing fires in storage racks - including furniture racks - even when the fire begins at a lower level and there are obstructions to the sprinkler discharge from above. The fire protection industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D to develop sprinklers for just this type of fire. This technology is not inexpensive, and that is why building and business owners aren't proactive about voluntarily putting this level of protection into their buildings. Building and fire officials often must deal with the political backlash over requirements for this type of upgrade and often the business community's objections are given precedence. The key point is that 9 valiant firefighters lost their lives because a chain of decisions was made by others, likely based on economics and the badly flawed, "It won't happen to me" theory. THAT should be the focus of your next story. Best wishes, Stephen M. Leyton PROTECTION DESIGN & CONSULTING San Diego, CA -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Sornsin Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 8:35 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Charleston SC Fire FYI, there is an article at http://www.thestate.com/154/story/96873.html which included the following statement: "Given the swiftness and ferocity of the furniture-fueled fire, officials speculated, the extra water might not have mattered." I have sent the writer my opinion about the veracity of that statement. It reminds me of the NFPA's comments after the Station House Fire. Some folks don't seem to appreciate the effectiveness of sprinkler systems in the early stages of a fire. I don't blame the reporter - but I thought he should be aware of the facts. Mark A. Sornsin, PE Fire Protection Engineer Ulteig Engineers, Inc. Fargo, ND 701.280.8591 [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Sprinklerforum mailing list [email protected] http://lists.firesprinkler.org/mailman/listinfo/sprinklerforum To Unsubscribe, send an email to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Put the word unsubscribe in the subject field)
