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-Attributes forgotten that need to be mentioned more often
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Concrete and masonry can stop the spread of fires
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To provide the best protection for occupants and afford the greatest opportunity to live, ride out a
fire and/or escape, the local Masonry Advisory Council always recommends that codes for buildings require a balanced design made up of four key elements:
1. fire detection
2.
suppression
3. education
4. containment.
Fire detection including the installation of smoke detectors and fire alarms. Active fire suppression includes the use of sprinkler systems.
Education involves the fire prevention services with annual inspections (fire drills, training of personnel including occupants/building owners.) Finally, the fourth element is fire containment. Fire containment includes, fire
barriers, firewalls, exterior walls, floors and roofs of noncombustible fire resistant materials such as concrete and masonry.
Masonry walls can reduce or eliminate the spread of fire and provides precious additional
protection and time for occupants to exit or ride out a fire. But today, new model building codes and fire codes have strayed significantly from the discussed balanced design approach to fire safety. The public and design
professional should know about this dilution of fire safety and demand redundancy in fire safety. You should never trade off compartmentation or detection for just suppression. Fire safety involves two types of systems Ð
active and passive. Compartmentation is built into a structure, suppression and detection systems can be deactivated, or not properly maintained.
What we do need for fire safety in the 21st century is - Balanced Design!
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In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed over 20,000
structures in a single day. Chicago Mayor Joseph Medill, of the "Fireproof Party", delivered strong words during his inaugural address a few months after the tragedy, citing as a primary
cause of the fire the populous "blind, unreasoning infatuation in favor of pine for outside walls, and pine covered with paper and tar for roofs," which "of all building substances is the most
incendiary." Medill went on to state that "if we rebuild the city of this dangerous material, we have a moral certainty, at no distant day, of
a recurrence of the late catastrophe." His concern prompted him to declare that "the outside walls and roof of every building, to be hereafter erected
within the limits of Chicago, should be composed of materials as incombustible as brick, stone, iron, concrete or slate." Medill recognized the
importance of non-combustible materials almost 150 years ago, yet today we are still arguing for masonry construction to "contain" fire spread. And,
without stricter building codes, these devastating fires will put the public at greater risk.