A review is presented of the state of the art of smoke production measurement, prediction of smoke impact as part of computer-based fire modeling, and measurement and prediction of the impact of smoke through deposition of soot on and corrosion of electrical equipment. The literature review on smoke corrosivity testing and damage due to smoke deposition emphasizes (despite extensive research on smoke corrositity) the lack of validated and widely applicable prescriptive or performance based methods to assure electrical equipment survivability given exposure to fire smoke. Circuit bridging via current leakage through deposited smoke was identified as an important mechanism of electronic and electrical equipment failure during NPP fires. In the near term, assessment of potential damage can reasonably be based on the airborne smoke exposure concentration and, perhaps, the exposure duration. Hence, models that can predict the airborne smoke concentration would be sufficient to suit short-term analysis needs. In the longer term, it would be desirable to develop models that could estimate the deposition behavior of smoke, as well and specifically correlate the combination of deposited and airborne smoke to component damage.

Research funded under the Fire Safe Cigarette Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-352) has led to the development of two test methods for measuring the ignition propensity of cigarettes. The Mock-Up Ignition Test Method uses substrated physically similar to upholstered furniture and mattresses: a layer of fabric over padding. The measure of cigarette performance is ignition or non-ignition of the substrate. The Cigarette Extinction Test Method replaces the fabric/padding assembly with multiple layers of common filter paper. The measure of performance is full-length burning or self-extinguishment of the cigarette. Routine measurement of the relative ignition propensity of cigarettes is feasible using either of the two methods. Improved cigarette performance under both methods has been linked with reduced real-world ignition behavior; and it is reasonable to assume that this, in turn, implies a significant real-world benefit. Both methods have been subjected to interlaboratory study. The resulting reproducibilities were comparable to each other and comparable to those in other fire test methods currently being used to regulate materials which may be involved in unwanted fires. Using the two methods, some current commercial cigarettes are shown to have reduced ignition propensities relative to the current best-selling cigarettes. *] This is one of six volumes in the Final Report, Fire Safe Cigarette Act of 1990. VOLUME 1. Overview: Practicability of Developing a Performance Standard to Reduce Cigarette Ignition Propensity by Jones-Smith, J., et al. VOLUME 3. Modeling the Ignition of Soft Furnishings by a Cigarette by Mitler, H. E., et al. VOLUME 4. Cigarette Fire Incident Study by Harwood, B., et al. VOLUME 5. Toxicity Testing Plan by Lee, B. C., et al. VOLUME 6. Societal Costs of Cigarette Fires by Ray, D. R., et al.

New technologies and research are redefining the state-of-the-art in building evacuation. The time is right to rethink the entire infrastructure of egress from buildings in light new opportunities to address the economic and life-safety issues. Approximately 40 experts from a variety of disciplinary background assembled in Warrenton, VA from April 1-3, 2008 in order to consider building evacuation, starting with a blank sheet of paper. Structured around the principles of Value-Focused Thinking (a text authored by workshop moderator Ralph Keeney), the participants were encouraged to consider values, objectives, alternatives, and metrics. This process combined the benefits of free-thinking brainstorming with a formalism which encouraged evaluation of the potential for new ideas. By the conclusion of the third day, over 400 ideas had been developed, along with metrics for future evaluation of the ideas.

This report reviews the literature on metal inhibition of flames and identifies metal species with potential as fire suppressant additives. To provide a basis for discussion, the detailed mechanism of inhibition of iron is reviewed, and the reasons for its loss of effectiveness are described. The demonstrated flame inhibiting properties of other metals is then discussed, followed by a description of the potential loss of effectiveness for these other metals. The production ban on the widely used and effective halon fire suppressants due to their ozone depletion potential, has motivated an extensive search for replacements. Metal containing compounds have attracted attention- especially for unoccupied spaces-because of their extraordinary effectiveness in some configurations. For example, Fe(CO)5 has been found to be up to eighty times more effective than CF3Br at reducing the overall reaction rate in premixed methane-air flames, when added at low concentration. Unfortunately, it has also been found to produce condensed-phase particles which reduce its effectiveness for co-flow diffusion flames. Hence, it is of interest to identify other metal compounds which may be strong flame inhibitors and then to assess their potential for loss of effectiveness through condensation. To achieve this goal, the present report provides background on current understanding of metal inhibition of flames, identifying metals with fire suppression potential. The inhibition mechanism of the iron is described, and the followed by a description of the reasons why it losses its effectiveness in some flame systems. The equivalent flame inhibiting species of other metal agents is then discussed, and evidence for any potential loss of effectiveness for these other metals is assembled and discussed.

A standard procedure is needed for obtaining smoke toxic potency data for use in fire hazard and risk analyses. Room fire testing of finished products is impractical, directing attention to the use of apparatus that can obtain the needed data quickly and at affordable cost. This report examines the first of a series bench-scale fire tests to produce data on the yields of toxic products in both pre-flashover and post-flashover flaming fires. The apparatus is the radiant furnace in NFPA 269 and ASTM E 1678. Test specimens were cut from finished products that were also burned in room-scale tests: a sofa made of upholstered cushions on a steel frame, particleboard bookcases with a laminated finish, and household electric power cable. Initially, the standard test procedure was followed, with a variation to reduce the contribution to the effluent of post- flaming pyrolysis. Subsequent variations in the procedure included cutting the test specimen into small pieces and performing the tests at a reduced oxygen volume fraction of 0.17. The yields of CO2 CO, HCl, and HCN were determined. The yields of other toxicants (NO, NO2, formaldehyde, and acrolein) were below the detection limits, but volume fractions at the detection limits were shown to be of limited toxicological importance relative to the detected toxicants. In general, dicing the test specimen and performing the tests at the reduced oxygen volume fraction had little effect on the toxic gas yields, within the experimental uncertainties. The exceptions were an increase in the CO yield for diced specimens at reduced oxygen, a decrease in the HCN yield from the intact sofa and cable specimens at reduced oxygen, and an increase in the HCN yield from dicing the cable specimens. In none of the procedure variations did the CO yield approach the value of 0.2 found in real-scale post flashover fire tests.

A standard procedure is needed for obtaining smoke toxic potency data for use in fire hazard and risk analyses. Room fire testing of finished products is impractical, directing attention to the use of apparatus that can obtain the needed data quickly and at affordable cost. This report presents examination of the second of a series bench-scale fire tests to produce data on the yields of toxic products in both pre-flashover and post-flashover flaming fires. The apparatus is the ISO/TS 19700 controlled equivalence ratio tube furnace. This apparatus uses a mechanical feed mechanism to supply solid fuel into a tube furnace at a pre-determined rate, so that the global equivalence ratio can be adjusted. The test specimens were cut from finished products that were also burned in room-scale tests: a sofa made of upholstered cushions on a steel frame, particleboard bookcases with a laminated finish, and household electric cable. Initially, the standard test procedure was followed for two fire stages, well ventilated flaming and post- flashover. Subsequent variation in the procedure included dicing the specimen, further decreasing the equivalence ratio (well ventilated flaming) or increasing it (post-flashover), increasing the mass loading while maintaining the equivalence ratio, and increasing the fuel feed rate while maintaining the equivalence ratio. The yields of CO2 CO, HCl, and HCN were determined. The yields of other toxicants (NO, NO2, formaldehyde, and acrolein) were below the detection limits, but volume fractions at the detection limits were shown to be of limited toxicological importance relative to the detected toxicants. In general, the largest effects were seen between the two fire stages. The other variations within the fire stage had minor effects on gas yields. Under post-flashover conditions, the sum of the CO2 and CO yields frequently accounted for half or less of the carbon originally in the specimen. As a result, the gaseous combustion products cannot be used to estimate the mass burning rate. Under post flashover conditions, the CO yield for the sofa approached the value of 0.2 found in real-scale postflashover fire tests. However, for the bookcase and cable it did not. Yields of HCl from the cables generally approached their notional yields under well- ventilated conditions, and HCN was most readily detected from the sofa under post-flashover conditions at toxicologically significant concentrations.

A standard procedure is needed for obtaining smoke toxic potency data for use in fire hazard and risk analyses. Room fire testing of finished products is impractical, directing attention to the use of apparatus that can obtain the needed data quickly and at affordable cost. In this work we compare yields of toxic gases generated by four bench scale apparatus to previously conducted room-scale fires. The bench scale apparatus are the radiant apparatus in NFPA 269 and ASTM E 1678, the smoke density chamber in ISO 5659-2, a controlled-atmosphere version of the cone calorimeter (ASTM E 1354), and the tube furnace in ISO/TS 19700. In the bench scale experiments, the test specimens were cut from finished products that were also burned in the room-scale tests: a sofa made of upholstered cushions on a steel frame, particleboard bookcases with a laminated finish, and household electric cable. The yields of CO2 CO, HCl, and HCN were determined. The yields of other toxicants (NO, NO2, formaldehyde, and acrolein) were below the detection limits, but volume fractions at the detection limits were shown to be of limited toxicological importance relative to the detected toxicants. The bench scale and room scale yields are compared, and the bench scale apparatus are assessed for the degree to which they accurately predict room scale yields. The results of this study provide a better basis for obtaining toxic potency input data for fire modeling than currently exists.

This report summarizes the measurement results and recommended procedures for responding to building plumbing system contamination incidents and restoring the water system to safe operation. The recommendations are based on analysis of the results of a measurement and modelling research project investigated contamination and decontamination issues related to building plumbing systems.

This report documents the stress-strain behavior of a collection of structural steels recovered from the collapse of the World Trade Center. These steels, combined with literature data form the basis of a model for the stress-strain behavior of structural steels in general. The model accounts for the lost of strength, the decrease in work hardening and the increase in the strain-rate sensitivity with increasing temperature. For general structural steels, it takes the measured yield strength as its only input parameter. The new model predicts the stress-strain behavior of the steels slightly better than the existing Eurocode 3 stress-strain model.

The purpose of this document is to provide the foundation for the development of a guidance document on emergency communication message content and dissemination strategies. The document answers three major questions regarding emergency communication systems: 1) What technology exists or is proposed for use in emergency notification? 2) What approaches are currently being used to disseminate messages? 3) How does the public respond to different types of information and information sources? The document begins with a discussion of the technology that exists or is proposed for use in emergency notification, along with the positive and negative aspects of each system. The ways in which social media tools can be used to provide warnings in emergencies are included. Second, the document discusses the various types of emergencies for which warnings are needed, the range of protective actions that are taken by building occupants in emergencies, and the nature of the information required based upon the emergency type. The emergency communication systems installed in two different college campuses are described as examples of approaches used to disseminate warnings during emergencies. Finally, a comprehensive literature review is presented on how the public responds to various types of information and information sources both in emergency and non-emergency conditions. A summary list of the relevant findings from each literature source is assembled in Appendix A to identify the most effective ways to create or disseminate messages to achieve optimal occupant response. Detailed annotations for each source are presented in Appendix B.

One of the most important aspects of effective firefighter response to an emergency event is awareness of the location of the firefighters involved, especially in cases with limited visibility due to darkness, heavy smoke, or unfamiliar and changing environments. Location and tracking systems (LTS ) have been developed and are being refined to aid firefighting operations or the rescue of firefighters in distress. In this National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) technical note, LTS technologies are examined with the goal of establishing structural and electromagnetic scenarios that are representative of situations in which firefighters are most in need of this technology. Firefighter injury and fatality data are studied to determine the building and occupancy types that are associated with the highest risk of injuries. Current radio frequency (RF) regulations are explored to provide guidance on the electromagnetic landscape in which LTS are expected to operate on the fire ground. The potential effects of RF attenuation, RF multipath, and RF interference, which impact the ability of LTS to operate and communicate with incident command posts, are also discussed. Notional building and electromagnetic scenarios are presented to support the development of future test methods and standards that will appropriately challenge and evaluate LTS performance. These scenarios are also useful for fire departments and local jurisdictions in determining which types of firefighter LTS may be most effective in the types of structures and occupancies in their community.

This body of work provides detailed information on the nature of the Shenandoah Retirement Home Fire in Roanoke County, Virginia on December 14, 1989. It will assist policymakers who must decide on allocations of resources between fire and other pressing problems, and within the fire service to improve codes and code enforcement, training, public fire education, building technology, and other related areas.

To develop a clear picture of the specific requirements of the rural arson control system, the IAFC conducted in-depth case studies of these systems in four rural counties. The results from visits to rural arson control programs in seven states are incorporated in this report..

For the last forty years, NIST has led the world in fire metrology through research conducted at the Large Fire Laboratory, which is being expanded to enable experiments on real-scale structures under combined structural and fire loads. The combined capabilities of large fire testing and structural fire testing will be comprised in the National Fire Research Laboratory (NFRL), which is expected to be completed in 2013. Measurements of temperature, displacement, and strain at hundreds of points on a structural system in the fire zone are needed to validate analytical tools for fire conditions. However, the ability to measure the performance of structures during realistic fire exposures is severely limited due to a significant gap in measurement science. At present, temperatures are measured with thermocouples and strains are measured with high temperature strain gages. Each of these sensors requires a separate line for data collection during the experiment. Further, high temperature strain gages are unreliable and often do not perform as expected during fire tests. Significant improvements to structural measurement in fire conditions are needed to advance the validation of analytical tools and performance based design methodologies. Candidate methods for temperature, displacement, and strain measurements that could meet these performance requirements were reviewed. A demonstration test that employed a natural gas burner in the Large Fire Facility evaluated the potential of digital image correlation and high temperature strain gages to measure thermally induced strains.The technology review and the outcome of the demonstration test indicate that digital image correlation and fiber optic methods have great promise for temperature, displacement, and strain measurement. A four-stage development plan is proposed to overcome these challenges.

Tests were conducted to assess the performance of various residential smoke alarms to kitchen fires and nuisance alarm cooking scenarios. A test structure representing a kitchen, living room and hallway was constructed to conduct the tests. Eight different residential smoke alarms types, two photoelectric models, two ionization models, two dual sensor models, and two multi-sensor, intelligent models were used in this study. The data gathered provided insight into the susceptibility of alarm activation from exposures to typical cooking events and alarm times for actual kitchen fires. The effects on the type of alarm, and its distance from the cooking activity or fire were examined. Combustible materials typically found on a counter top can spread flames to overhead cabinets, and a single empty 0.6 m wide 1.0 m tall cabinet can produce a peak heat release rate nearly sufficient to flashover a small room. A protective metal barrier on the bottom and side facing the range tended to limit the spread of flames to the cabinet and reduce the heat release rate. All smoke alarms responded before hazardous conditions developed. The I1 alarm tended to respond first at a given location. Results show smoke alarms placed at the furthest location may provide less than 120 s of available safe egress time, which suggests a more central alarm location closer to the kitchen for this configuration. Ten cooking activities were examined to determine an alarm s propensity to activate to cooking aerosols. In most cases, the propensity to nuisance alarm decreased as the distance from the cooking source increased. Alarms that rely on sensitive ionization chambers (here I1 and D2) experience more nuisance alarm activations across all cooking activities and locations. All alarms except I1 and D2 experienced about the same nuisance alarm frequency across all cooking activities for locations outside the kitchen.

This Orientation Manual provides practical information: both rescue techniques, and preparedness information for the first responder who will encounter people with visible and non-visible disabilities through their work. This publication can assist first responders in advance or make critical emergency decisions. This publication will help first responders to confidently work with the disability community toward the goal of protecting and saving lives and minimizing trauma.