John R. Hall

SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering

Revised and significantly expanded, the fifth edition of this classic work offers both new and substantially updated information. As the definitive reference on fire protection engineering, this book provides thorough treatment of the current best practices in fire protection engineering and performance-based fire safety. Over 130 eminent fire engineers andresearchers contributed chapters to the book, representing universities and professional organizations around the world. It remains the indispensible source for reliable coverage of fire safety engineering fundamentals, fire dynamics, hazard calculations, fire risk analysis, modeling and more. With seventeen new chapters and over 1,800 figures, the this new editioncontains: • Step-by-step equations that explain engineering calculations • Comprehensive revision of the coverage of human behavior in fire, including several new chapters on egress system design, occupant evacuation scenarios, combustion toxicity and data for human behavior analysis • Revised fundamental chapters for a stronger sense of context • Added chapters on fire protection system selection and design, including selection of fire safety systems, system activation and controls and CO2 extinguishing systems • Recent advances in fire resistance design • Addition of new chapters on industrial fire protection, including vapor clouds, effects of thermal radiation on people, BLEVEs, dust explosions and gas and vapor explosions • New chapters on fire load density, curtain walls, wildland fires and vehicle tunnels • Essential reference appendices on conversion factors, thermophysical property data, fuel properties and combustion data, configuration factors and piping properties.

Cigarette characteristics, smoker characteristics, and the relationship to cigarette fires

Data were collected from eight cities on a wide range of cigarette and smoker characteristics for a sample of smokers. Of these, 564 smokers had had fires and were identified through fire department response to those fires, while the other 1,611 smokers had not had fires and were identified through a telephone sample survey of the communities. The characteristics analyzed included those that had shown evidence of a relationship to the risk of a cigarette-initiated fire, either in laboratory studies or in previous statistical analyses of fire experience.The smoker characteristics analyzed were household income, education, age, gender, and race. The cigarette characteristics analyzed were filter, tobacco column length, filter length, circumference, density, amount of tobacco, menthol, citrate, porosity, and pack type. In addition, a variable was used to control for the smokers city.After controlling for all smoker characteristics and city, logistic regression modeling showed four cigarette characteristics to be significant: filter, filter length, porosity, and type of pack. Filter, filter length, and porosity all affect air intake, which, therefore, appears to be an important physical element in the combustion process associated with risk. Analysis limited to filtered cigarettes only showed the same characteristics to be significant, plus tobacco column length. Extension of the analysis to two-way interaction terms did not change any of the conclusions on which cigarette characteristics are important, but it did indicate that the role of pack type was different for men and women.Sensitivity analyses, shown in the appendix, supported the main conclusions that cigarette characteristics are significant after controlling for smoker characteristics and that the four specific cigarette characteristics—filter, filter length, porosity, and pack—are the ones that are significant. These analyses checked the impact of cluster sampling, sensitivity to missing data on smoker characteristics, and sensitivity to nonfire smoker cases with responses by people other than the smokers themselves.All this means that there are already cigarettes commercially available that exhibit a reduced propensity for ignition when one controls for smoker characteristics.

Fires Involving Appliance Housings: Is There a Clear and Present Danger?

In the past couple years, worldwide attention has been focused on the fire hazard potentially posed by the housings or casings of several types of equipment. This paper addresses the narrow question of whether there is a clear and present danger in the US with regard to the fire hazard posed by the appliance housings of certain types of equipment, based on the fire loss record relevant to these issues. The best available fire loss statistics indicate that the appliance housing fire problem in the USA may be large enough to justify some attention but would not normally be regarded as large enough to justify urgent or priority attention. The paper also asks whether there are other reasons that would justify urgent action and discusses several candidate reasons.

Introduction to Fire Risk Analysis

The risk assessment chapters in this section describe concepts and methods to be used in answering the three questions: What could happen? How bad would it be? How likely is it? This chapter in particular is intended to provide an overview of fire risk analysis as a whole, indicating how the subsequent chapters fit together and how a completed fire risk analysis connects to other evaluative and management activities. The purpose of this introductory chapter is threefold:

How Many People are Exposed to Sublethal Fire Smoke

A good estimate of the magnitude of the population exposed to fire smoke would be a reality check on the suitability of predicting harm to people from fire through the use of conservatively low fire safety thresholds designed to assure no harm to even vulnerable subpopulations. If this total number of exposed people were far greater than the number of reported victims, then it would be fair to say that the implied safety factors in such a calculation are unreasonably large.Based on analyses of demographic and fire incidence data, it is estimated that between 310,000 and 670,000 people (excluding firefighters) in the U.S. are exposed to fire smoke each year in unwanted home fires alone. This compares to an average of 3,318 home civilian fire deaths and 11,505 civilian fire injuries per year involving smoke inhalation in part or in whole in reported home fires. There are thus 21 to 45 civilians exposed to toxic fire smoke per year for every one with a reported fire injury involving smoke inhalation. It is likely that most of these exposures are brief or are to the dilute smoke that is present outside the room of fire origin, where most survivors are located, and do not result in any noticeable consequences, let alone injury or death.

A fire risk analysis model for assessing options for flammable and combustible liquid products in storage and retail occupancies

A fire risk analysis modeling framework was developed to analyze options for fire-safe handling and storing of flammable and combustible liquids in containers. The model illustrates the application of general risk analysis modeling principles to a current, highly visible problem and introduces some new modeling elements. Risk is driven by relative success in providing a complete, operational sprinkler system adequate for controlling fires that start in ordinary combustibles, well away from the liquid products.

Product Fire Risk Analysis

Since the late 1990s, there has been an explosion of fire risk assessment guidance documents, both in the United States and around the world. Some address the whole subject of fire risk assessment, whereas others are focused on major component tasks, such as the selection of scenarios. But nearly all of these documents are intended for assessments at the level of whole buildings or similar-sized construction projects. Almost none are intended to support design and purchase decisions at the level of products.

Who Gets the Benefit of the Doubt From Uncertainty

Codes, standards and regulations require compliance with criteria stated as the results of tests or calculations. These results have associated uncertainty. This paper discusses different approaches to the use of uncertainty in the determination of compliance. In particular, most discussion addresses the many ways in which the decision-making protocol, intended to result in a determination of compliance, may shift the benefit of the doubt of the uncertainty between different interested parties.