home - contact us - Atlanta: (770) 564-3505
Charlotte: (704) 531-9077
Subscribe
- RSS
Search
Categories
- Blog
- 7 Habits
- AHJ Negotiations
- Alternative Solutions
- Case Studies
- Code Analysis
- Construction Admin
- Data Centers
- Failure Analysis
- Fatal Fires
- Fire Modeling
- Fire Safety Audits
- Fire Safety in Dorms
- Fire Safety Tips
- Fire Sprinkler Freeze Failures
- Forensics
- Hazard & Risk Assessment
- HGI Development & Strategies
- How Jeff Harrington Stumbled Into Fire Engineering
- Life Safety Audits
- Litigation Support
- NFPA Stats
- Origin & Cause
- Performance-Based Design
- PLC Audits
- Property Loss Control
- Smoke Venting
- Subrogation
- System Commissioning
- System Design
- Testing Witness & Coordination
- The Non-Traditional FPE Career Path
- Warehouse Fire Safety
- Water Supply
Archives
The Knowledge and professionalism of Harrington Group, Inc. has been essential to IDI’s success.
— , IDI
NFPA Releases Report on High-Rise Building Fires
Posted on Friday, December 16th, 2011
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) released a new report this month, which focused on High-Rise Building Fires. For the purposes of this report, a high-rise building was defined as a building more than 75 feet in height, measured from the lowest level of fire department vehicle access to the floor of the highest occupiable story. A height of 75 feet can usually be translated to seven stories.
The NFPA report found that between the years of 2005-2009, fire departments in the United States responded to an average of 15,700 high-rise building structure fires, which caused an annual average of 53 civilian fire deaths, 546 civilian fire injuries, and $235 million in direct property damage. Approximately half of these high-rise building structure fires occurred in four types of facilities: apartments; hotels; buildings caring for the sick; and offices. In addition, structure fires in these four property categories resulted in approximately $99 million in direct property damage per year. However, NFPA found that the risk of fire, fire-related deaths, and fire-related property damage tends to be lower in these particular high-rise facility categories than their shorter counterparts. This could be attributed to a higher use of wet pipe sprinklers and fire detection equipment use in high-rise buildings.
The report also showed that most high-rise building fires begin on the first six floors, with only a fraction of fires beginning on floors seven or higher. In addition, the risk of a fire starting is greater on the lower floors of apartments, hotels, and facilities that care for the sick, but greater on the upper floors of office buildings.
TweetIf you would like more information, or believe your firm could benefit from Harrington Group’s expertise, we invite you to contact us. Our engineers are trained to listen to your needs and concerns, and help you move forward to find the Best Total Solution.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL