Experience in North America
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HISTORY
THE ROLE OF NUCLEAR POWER
COMMERCIAL/INDUSTRIAL BOOM
THE COST OF FIRE
THE ULI/ULC DIFFERENCE
STUDIES: MEETING THE NEED
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Commercial/Industrial Boom
During that same period, the North America industrial and commercial construction industries had been paralleling each other closely in the boom of the seventies. More production—in the sense of new construction—was required to meet increasing industrial demand, and an equal demand existed for more commercial and institutional buildings to accommodate the increase in both population and businesses.
As the expansion boom progressed, however, buildings and plants industrial and commercial areas began to experience new and serious fire-related problems. Commercial buildings were being built taller, and the materials going into them were changing; hotel and office interior were increasingly using new plastics and combustible synthetic materials, which added to the danger of fires and—in particular—toxic gases.
Nowhere, in all of this, was there any broad-based understanding of the critical importance—and the frightening potential hazards—of unprotected surface penetrations in buildings. As the pace of construction increased, the hazard posed by these penetrations went unchanged and unchallenged. The trouble was that, as recently as 1983, no one had any real, scientific understanding of what happens in a fire during the crucial initial combustion period, or of how a fire spreads and propagates itself through service penetrations.
Eventually, the loss of !ife—the lives of ordinary people and of firefighters— began to be recognized as unacceptably high. Publicity concerning the statistics began to escalate as quickly as the statistics themselves exploded. It became obvious that there was something new and terrible about the way fire, smoke, and gases propagated and behaved in high- rise buildings. No matter how well- equipped and trained the fire fighters might be, no matter how prompt their response. to an alarm, so many drastic things had taken place at the outset of a fire—the fire and smoke spread so quickly through these high buildings—that the firefighters were always too late by the time they arrived.
In industrial construction, as opposed to commercial, the same kind of thing was happening, although the priorities were different. Fires were proliferating—bigger, and fiercer fires than ever before.
In an industrial plant fire, however, there is usually minimal loss of life. The protection required by industry is oriented more towards protection against shutdowns and business interruptions, with their associated exorbitant costs.
Insurance underwriters, for their part, were discovering that the increasingly high claims for fire damages were far outstripping any possibility of their ever being able to recoup their losses by means of premium increases. And claims for loss of production were dwarfing claims for the costs of equipment replacement.
The Cost of Fire
In one instance, a manufacturer of seamless pipe was interrupted for almost one year when an electrical fire began in a cable tray located in an underground tunnel. The fire spread rapidly and lasted for six and one-half hours. Dense smoke, inaccessibility, and intense heat made it almost impossible to combat the fire effectively. Over 70 miles of power-control PVC cables were destroyed along with the steel mills central computer and numerous control centers. It was estimated that 20 to 30 tons of PVC decomposed during the fire, releasing 10 to 15 tons of hydrogen chloride gas, which contaminated buildings, reinforcing steel, and concrete walls.
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