Big Box Fire Protection

The release of the report on the Plainfield, IN Wal Mart warehouse fire has brought renewed focus to the issue of how the fire service can manage extremely large buildings with high fuel loads. I spent two days with a group of firefighters at a Blue Card Big Box seminar. The focus was to understand the new strategic and risk management approach to managing these events. As a former fire chief with 40 years of experience in fire protection consulting for property insurance, I thought I would share some of my thoughts after listening for two days.

The messages from this program were:

1. Allow the sprinkler system to do the job and control the fire. Since the sprinkler system is designed for 1 to 2 hours operating time, use that time to your advantage.

2. Immediately connect to and pump the fire department connection (FDC). Use the right pressure, 150 psi minimum. Pump all FDC connection points.

3. You cannot reliably search for occupants in buildings of this size due to air supply constraints. Life safety and rescue may not be a realistic operational priority. Do not risk a lot for what is a limited return.

4. Slow down the entry to the structure to allow for proper deployment of resources to designated roles

   1. Entry point assignment and meeting with reporting party

   2. FDC Support

   3. Roof and Wall Surveillance

   4. Fire pump and fire alarm control panel supervision

5. The entry team should have 4 firefighters on the initial hose line and have a thermal imaging camera for improved location of the fire.

6. Entry depth of the team should be limited to 175 feet to manage air supply limitations.

7. Observe interior fire and smoke conditions as indicators of fire growth and development. Recognize that you will not be able to gain control over a growing fire in a fuel rich and enclosed environment. Be prepared to go defensive.

8. Maintain high level of entry control, accountability, and incident command structure for firefighter safety

9. Do not turn off the sprinkler system or impair its water supply until you are confident the fire is out. If you go defensive and abandon any interior operations, you may shut off the sprinklers to divert that water to master streams.

This is a significant departure from standard fire fighting strategy and tactics. I can see the points being raised but it leaves the warehouse industry in a difficult position. Adequate sprinklers or total loss. The contents may be a total loss in any scenario.

There are some underlying issues that must be addressed if this approach is widely adopted.

The first is that fire departments lack significant education and experience in sprinkler systems. If fire departments are going to anchor their strategies around sprinkler systems, they need to know if the system is designed for the hazard. Based on my 40 years in the property insurance world I estimate that 2 in 5 warehouses have significant deficiencies in their sprinkler protection. Changes in commodities, storage array, storage height, or packaging will influence sprinkler adequacy. If there is ineffective change management for the building, these go unaddressed.

The fire company inspection program is not effective at evaluating sprinkler systems. The NFPA 25 process may or may not identify issues. Insurance companies may know, but that is confidential information. The people with their lives on the line need to have better evaluation skills.

The first evaluation skill should be hydraulic placard interpretation. Can you differentiate between ESFR and CMDA designs? If you do not know that these abbreviations mean, you have demonstrated the need for better training.

The course focused on NFPA 13 as the sprinkler guide. It did not discuss sprinkler design data for special hazards that are included in other NFPA standards. There was no discussion of the use of FM data sheets for hazards that are outside the scope of any NFPA publication. If you do not know the source of the design, you cannot effectively evaluate the system.

The fire sprinkler community does not make protection issues obvious. Prior editions of NFPA 13 had large drop sprinklers as part of storage protection. More recently sprinkler protection using K 17 ESFR heads was removed for some plastic storage arrays. These changes resulted when further testing called the effectiveness of these systems into question. The continued use of recalled sprinklers was considered a factor in the board and care fire that killed 9 people. How do we assure the community and the responding firefighters that these changes are communicated and the conditions corrected? Depending on the building owner to volunteer to fix things has proven ineffective.

The dependence on the FDC is fundamental but the same company inspection that did not identify the sprinkler deficiencies often does not address the basic need to maintain caps on the FDC. An uncapped FDC can become a de facto trash can. It takes debris, the size of a quarter, to obstruct a sprinkler. Did the five-year sprinkler exam include the FDC for debris? No, the only FDC inspection is visual. If this is your primary support point, it deserves a careful evaluation.

There is no standard plan for a defective FDC. Lack of system knowledge makes using an alternate like pumping the 2” drain line outside of possibility. Some agencies may pump a standpipe system, but most sprinkler system do not have this feature. If this is your primary support point, what is plan B?

What role does the fire department play in plan review? Who looks at sprinkler adequacy during the plan review process? Who has the most to lose? Everyone else can lose money, the fire department can lose their lives. If you lack the technical skill at plan review, how can you find or develop this resource?

The lack of engagement with building codes has allowed the development of mega structures that are outside the scope of local fire department resources. Silence gives consent and the only question many agencies ask about the new buildings how many tax dollars will it generate?

The pick modules inside these warehouses should be considered as buildings, not fixtures. A multi-story unit occupied by employees deserves better fire separation, protected means of egress and the ability of fire department to access standpipe connections from protected points. That fire spread vertically in this type of structure should not be a surprise.

Radio traffic inside these buildings was identified as a problem. Firefighters defaulted to using cell phones inside these buildings. Since these buildings were called a horizontal high rise, look to the Life Safety Code provisions for high rises and fire department communications systems for high rises as a place to start the conversation.

If fire departments are going to limit their incursion into the building to 175 feet, what happens to buildings wider than 350 feet? There is strong disagreement about the use of standpipe systems inside the buildings due to air management issues. The concept of breathing air refill stations in the building is also subject to debate. Unless we decide that buildings over certain dimensional constraints are disposable, some resolution to this issue is required.

I am glad that this topic is being elevated and evaluated. I hope that the training goes beyond these seminars and that the expertise level in fire protection is elevated within the fire service. What you do not know can be deadly.