The Station Nightclub burned on February 20, 2003 killing 100 occupants and severely injuring more than 200. There was a prompt outcry by the public for a determination of the causes and for those who were responsible to be identified. The Governor of Rhode Island, Donald Carcieri, promised the public, and the families of the victims, that there would be a thorough investigation and those responsible would be held accountable. Governor, Carcieri, went further; he promised he would make Rhode Island “the safest state in the nation”. Was it all post tragedy rhetoric or did the governor really mean what he said? Three years later the answers are becoming clear. To date, Governor Carcieri has failed in every way to follow through on his promises to the people of Rhode Island. I explain his failures below.
FAILURE TO DETERMINE THE FAULT
Those who have the knowledge, the training and the legal responsibility for the safety of the public were most responsible for the loss of life. The fire officials at the state, the county and the city levels were paid to protect the public. They were paid to know what fire safety features a place of assembly required. They were paid to learn the fundamentals including construction and interior sheathing criteria, exit requirements, occupancy limits, the design of fire control systems and all the other necessities of a fire safe environment. While the building was originally constructed many years ago it certainly had changes of occupancy at which time the absence of a fire sprinkler system and other essential safeguards could have been required. Further, if a property is determined to be a public endangerment, which this building certainly was, there are legal ways to correct that endangerment, or force a discontinuance of a dangerous use of an occupancy. Whether or not the state officials had created proper fire regulations and had enforced them was equally pertinent. If state fire officials had ignored fire safety fundamentals for places of assembly for the sake of expediency, or political pressure, that too would be pertinent. For example, if the state or local fire codes did not require a fire sprinkler system in a place of assembly where hundreds could gather, the obvious question to be asked is...why? Why did the fire officials fail to create codes to require this protection, if the regulations did not already require it?
Rather than properly evaluating the roles of those who were trained and paid to guarantee that places of assembly are safe, the fault was shifted to those who had no knowledge and no training in fire safety matters. There are two flaws with this type of cover-up of the real causes. One, those who were not trained to know fire safety fundamentals are being falsely accused. Secondly, when those who have the responsibility to require safety are able to escape blame by shifting the blame to others, the correction of the conditions that caused the disaster will likely not take place. This is what is happening, the needed corrections in the fire safety policies and the codes of Rhode Island are not being made; hence a repeat disaster is a real possibility.
SIGNIFICANCE OF HIGHLY FLAMMABLE SHEATHING COVERED-UP
Rather than assigning blame to the fire officials (who allowed the walls to be sheathed with what is often referred to as “solidified gasoline”), the attention was directed to the pyrotechnics. In event the walls were fire retardant or “fireproof” as required in a place of assembly, and even in a one family residence, the sparks from the pyrotechnics would have bounced off the walls harmlessly. So who should know that the nightclub walls near the stage would burn like solidified gasoline if a spark came in contact with them? What if someone had inadvertently dropped a still lit match or a cigarette into a waste paper basket set near that wall, or carelessly created an ignition in some other way? Would that careless act equate to second degree murder? Or, would the fault lay with the “experts” who failed to perform the job they were paid to do.? The fact is that if the fire officials had done their jobs, as they were paid to do, the pyrotechnics display would have merely been the icing on a pleasant evening. All the occupants would have gone home safely. Those who were paid to know and were paid to protect apparently knew not and cared less. So, in order to hide the blunders of the government employees the government investigators set out to crucify those who had no idea that a pyrotechnic display would create such horrible chaos.
WHY NO SPRINKLER SYSTEM?
The reason given for the nightclub being devoid of a fire sprinkler system was “explained” by saying at the time of construction the code did not require one. But that begs the question. The question is, WHY did the fire codes at the time of the disaster NOT require a fire sprinkler system for that building? Certainly, for more than 50 years there has been a great abundance of evidence to show that a fire sprinkler system is ESSENTIAL in a place of assembly. How could the Cocoanut Grove fire of 1942, where 492 died, occur, with the Rhode Island officials failing to comprehend that a place of assembly requires a sprinkler system? How could the many other large loss of life fires in non sprinklered buildings fail to convince the fire officials of Rhode Island that the Station Nightclub required sprinklers? The excuse that the building was built when sprinklers were not required was a cop out. That building was an endangerment to the public. If the fire officials had been properly concerned they would have found that there are regulations by which a public endangerment can be corrected. Of even more significance, why didn’t these officials create codes and policies that not only would have promoted sprinklers, but also made the protection palatable to the business community? The truth is, the fire officials did the very opposite. For decades the high level fire officials cooperate with that private business that creates and sells fire codes, the National Fire Protection Association, to create regulations that were deliberately structured to prevent sprinklers from being installed in most buildings.
AS CLOSE TO PERFECT AS PERFECT CAN BE
Sprinklers were developed during the latter half of the 19th century and by the 1890s the fire insurance industry realized that if sprinklers were allowed to go into all buildings there would be no fires and no fire insurance industry. Within Australia and New Zealand, all sprinkler systems were electrically connected to the fire departments. Every time a sprinkler opened the fire department received an automatic notification and there was a response. Therefore every sprinkler activation produced a fire report. H.W. Marryatte, an Australian fire protection engineer, compiled the data on one hundred years of sprinkler performance. Then he published the information in his 1971 book entitled “Fire, a Century of Automatic Sprinkler Protection in Australia and New Zealand 1886-1986. The performance of the sprinkler system over that 100 year period was extraordinary. Sprinklers controlled the fires 99.5 percent of the time. Even more incredible, during that 100 year period only 11 fire deaths occurred within sprinklered buildings including industrial and commercial properties. In those building types that are classed “light hazard” in the United States, including places of assembly, night clubs hotels and restaurants, there were only three deaths in sprinklered building during that entire 100 year period. If there was a cure to cancer that was better than 99.5 percent certain, would society be angry if it was withheld from about 98 or 99 percent of all at risk? I think so. So should not all those at risk to fire, which is just about everyone, be angry that the NFPA and the high level fire officials of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) have prevented affordable sprinklers systems from being installed in about 98 percent of all buildings in America (including homes).
TIGHT CONTROL OF SPRINKLER DESIGN AND A RESTRICTED MARKET
The primary strategy by which the NFPA, the IAFC and others who benefit from fire, have kept sprinklers OUT of about 98 percent of the buildings in America, is by pricing the protection so extremely high that the protection becomes practical only for very large and high hazard properties, such as industrial plants and shopping centers. The second strategy aimed at restricting the use of sprinklers has been to make the installation criteria so complex and restricted that a very small number of sprinkler companies were able to gain near total control the entire market. These sprinkler firms cooperated with the NFPA, the fire insurance industry and the fire officials. They accepted a greatly reduced market for the system but they gained a near monopoly control of the work. The work was unusually lucrative due to the hugely excessive design criteria and exaggerated prices. Plumbers were nearly totally excluded from installing sprinklers. Over the past 30 years the tight control of the market by a very few firms has eroded somewhat, but the corruption within the NFPA code system continues.
THE FIRE SOLUTION TO THE STATION NIGHTCLUB WAS DENIED
Let’s take a look at what protection of a light hazard property, such as a night club, will require. The sprinkler code for Australia, where the system was 99.5 percent perfect at controlling fires over a hundred year period, required less than a 50 gallons per minute water supply to feed a system that would have protected the Station Nightclub. Yes, the amount of water already inside that nightclub could have prevented those deaths and injuries. A one inch pipe sized grid at 20 feet on centers with ten dollar sprinklers spaced at 20 feet along the lines would have prevented 100 fire deaths and 200 injuries. Probably one or two sprinklers would have opened within a minute or so of the ignition. Probably not more than 20 gpm would have doused that fire. However, the NFPA code and the cooperation of the top people within the IAFC, kept properly engineered and affordable protection out of the building. That is why a hundred died that night.
Has the hundred dead patrons touched the consciences of those who control the codes? Hardly! It is evident from the post fire period that the NFPA and the IAFC controllers remain determined to prevent most buildings in Rhode Island from being sprinklered. Legislation was passed requiring many or most places of assembly to be sprinklered. However, the truth that the top fire officials in Rhode Island have kept from the public is that the cost of installing new and hugely expensive “fire lines” from the street to the inside of the buildings is wasted money. There is absolutely no technical or practical reason for the 20,000 or 30,000 dollar “Fire Lines” that are being imposed on the businesses. These large and costly fire lines are part of the strategy to keep sprinklers OUT of those buildings, even as the IAFC gang is telling the press that they want the buildings protected. Even with the oversized and excessive interior pipe layout at the ceilings, less than ten percent of the water that the hugely excessive fire lines will deliver to the riser - can not be delivered to the site of an early fire. The typical huge fire line will deliver a thousand gallons per minute and more to the sprinkler riser. But even with oversize distribution lines less than a hundred gpm will be deliverable to the site of the early fire.
Those hugely costly fire lines are nothing but a scam. The high level fire officials of the IAFC, who conspire with the NFPA to keep the costs of protection too high for small properties, become the “Good Guys” by advocating sprinklers (that are not economically feasible). The business owners are perceived as the “Bad Guys” because they fight against protection systems that cost so much they will be bankrupted.
FIRE DEPARTMENTS CANNOT COMPETE WITH SPRINKLERS
A new born fire is like a tiger cub. When small it is easy to kill it. When it is grown it will kill you. There is only one good time to control a fire and that is immediately after it initiates. A flaming type fire can go from a tiny and easy to snuff out nuisance to a room flashover fire within three minutes. The time available to intercept the killer and render it harmless, before it kills, often is not more than two minutes. However, man has at his disposal a destroyer of fire that is without peer. Its name is water spray. Have you ever poured a pail of water on an early fire? It goes out like right now! But applying the water in a fine spray is by far the most effective way to snuff out a fire. It can be applied automatically by sprinkler head. Or it can be applied manually with a small hose and spray nozzle. However, with few exceptions, if that fire is not detected within one minute and if water is not applied inside of two minutes, it may well be on its way to killing the baby.
A remote fire department cannot apply water to a fire at that time when it is easily controlled. The fire officials usually advise the public that the “running time” from the station to the home or nightclub will be within 5 minutes. Even that is inadequate. However, likely there will be burn time prior to the call to 911. There may be a delay to relay the call to the nearby fire station. When the fire trucks arrive at the fire site the pumper must be connected to the closest fire hydrant and the hose laid to the site. Of course, traffic can cause delays. Therefore, the real time from ignition to water being applied will likely be anywhere from ten minutes to more than a half hour. A building fire can be killing everyone within in less than five minutes. Any person not already outside of the building on the front lawn when the trucks arrive may be coming out horizontally.
Whereas one gallon of water applied to the fire early may be more than adequate, ten thousand gallons ten minutes later may be inadequate. The reality is that a remote fire station cannot compete with in-house protection. That is why the NFPA has dedicated a hundred years of corrupted code writing to the task of preventing sprinklers from ruining the business of fire, and also diminishing the role of the fire department. Fire is a two hundred billion dollar a year business and there are a lot of “fire experts” who are not about to allow inside-the-building protection ruin a good thing.
THE GOVERNOR OVERLOOKS THE BIG PROBLEM
Governor Carcieri said that he would make Rhode Island the safest state in America from fire. Well, if that is his goal then the home is where the solution is most needed. About 94 percent of all fire deaths due to building fires occur in the home. The NFPA and the IAFC dilute that statistic to about 80 percent by adding outdoor fires including automobile crash fires to the building fires. But, this we know, if a building fire kills it is almost always a home that is burning. There is no way that the governor can make R.I. fire safe without making the home more fire safe.
KEEPING FIRE SPRINKLERS OUT OF HOMES
There is a “close to perfect” solution to the home fire problem. It is a residential sprinkler system. However, existing homes are close to a hundred percent not sprinkler protected. Homes being newly constructed could be economically sprinkler protected. But the vast majority is not. There is a reason why. A residential sprinkler code was created defining a low cost system that would use the amount of water that a home usually has, which could be from 5 to 15 gpm. I helped write this code which was based on my research and field testing. It was adopted by the State of California. However, the NFPA sponsored a fire test program where the testing was intentionally rigged to “prove” that approximately 40 gpm was the minimum amount of water that could supply a residential sprinkler system. Then a high level fire bureaucrat from the Federal Government went to the 1980 NFPA convention and provided a false account of that rigged and dishonest NFPA test program. His false testimony, based on the fraudulent testing, convinced those assembled that a viable system had to have about 40 gpm to control that early fire. The truth is that the early fire can be controlled with as little as 5 gpm. At the very least, the system will provide an early warning and limit its growth and production of toxic gases. This will allow those within to get out safely, or provide time for an occupant to apply water spray to the limited fire.
By exaggerating the water need with false fire tests and deceptions, the cost of protecting a home was greatly increased. Either a supplemental (separate water tank and pump) is required or a larger (and costly) supply line to the home is needed. Often, water companies charge industrial rates for a larger supply connection to a home. Thus, the rigged tests and the performance lies were the “kiss of death” to protecting already built homes, and a serious deterrent to installing a sprinkler system when a new home is being built.
EARLY MANUAL FIRE CONTROL IS AN OPTION
It is extremely costly to retrofit a fire sprinkler system into an already-built home. However, installing fire detectors is practical and this will also provide vastly improved safety fore the home. If the home was equipped with a half inch, at-the-ready hose and spray nozzle as well as reliable fire detectors, an occupant would be warned when the fire was still of waste paper basket size. Within the next 15 seconds water spray could be applied to that still tiny and easy to control fire. A directed spray from a nozzle is even more efficient than sprinkler spray which blankets the room. A combination of reliable fire detectors and the best fire control weapon available to man would allow nearly all fires to be snuffed out almost immediately, long before a fire department response could arrive. In event, the occupants decided to not extinguish the fire and promptly exit the building, the early and reliable warning of fire would at least save lives.
THE CODE SYSTEM PREVENTS AN EARLY AND RELIABLE WARNING
When a code defining a reliable home fire detection system was created and adopted as a national code during the mid 1960s, there was an immediate effort to kill it. It was the same story as the fire sprinkler system for homes. Any within-the-home solution to the house fire was a threat to the profiteers who needed fires to create profits, or to justify a fire station on every other block. The NFPA system would not tolerate any built-in protection that could come close to eliminating major fires. The solution was to “certify” as reliable a near useless fire detector which they called a “smoke detector” (even though it was just about useless for warning of real and visible smoke). Testing proved the ionization device could not warn of a smoldering fire and would not warn of a flaming fire except under favorable circumstances.
With the knowledge that the ionization device was close to useless for protecting the children from fire, that was the device they decided to substitute for real protection. The code that defined a reliable fire detection system for the home was gutted. Fire tests were rigged to hide the defects of the ionization device. Performance lies were disseminated nationally via the NFPA Fire Journal advertisements. In time about 80 million homes in the United States were equipped with a phony smoke detector that false alarmed when the roast roasted or the toast toasted, but failed to warn of real fires that threatened the occupants and especially the children.
Of course, it is difficult for a person not familiar with the way the fire code system works in America to believe that there are people within the fire protection field who would falsify tests and disseminate performance lies in order to make money from a product that would result in tens of thousands of fire deaths. Seemingly, no one would be that corrupt. Well, that is why we have posted on the Internet the evidence of this very deadly fraud. Those who have trouble believing the fire code system of the NFPA could be that corrupt, please go to www.AquariumTest.com. Then go to www.Firecrusade.com and pull up the report, America’ Deadliest Cover-up Exposed. If you, the reader will do that, you will know that there are people within the “fire safety field” who will burn the children to make a buck. It will be a shocking but educational experience.
It is important to realize that those who scheme to keep the fires burning, by preventing affordable and properly engineered protective systems within building, are the types that rise to the top within a bureaucracy. They rise because they “protect the system” at all costs. Nothing is as important as protecting the bureaucracy and covering-up the blunders. However, below these schemers there is a vast array of honest and hard working members of the fire services who play no role in the code making operation. For the most part these rank and file firefighters know nothing about the regulatory corruption that produces so many deaths each year. The go-into-the-burning-building firefighters are heroes and good guys. I respect them.
WILL THE GOVERNOR KEEP HIS PROMISE TO THE PEOPLE?
So far the effort to make Rhode Island the “safest” state in the Union has been a bust. As expected, those officials who supposedly would enact practical and affordable solutions to the fire problem have instead climbed into bed with those who create corrupt fire codes to profit from fire. When the “experts” allow the NFPA and the sprinkler companies to charge twenty or thirty thousand dollars to put water into a building that already has adequate water within, it is clear the R.I. officials who created the post fire requirements for places of assembly did not have a clue as to what is needed and what is possible. When those who would make the state safer do not even comprehend that the smoke detector in nearly all homes is a scam, they surely do not know how to correct the problem. When they refuse to listen to common sense and engineering logic, and simply cooperate with those who are profiting from the disaster, they betray the public. Based on what has transpired to date, those who have been enlisted to “change” the R.I. fire regulations to prevent future loss of life, instead are cooperating with those willing to burn babies to profit from fire.
There is still time for Governor Carcieri to make the right decision and make Rhode Island a truly fire safe state. But it is a tough decision for an elected official to make. The decision is: A. Defy the top people within the IAFC and the NFPA and allow practical, affordable and reliable within-the-building systems to be installed to control the early fire. B. Bow to the power of the fire regulators. Allow the business community to be defrauded with overpriced sprinklers, forcing many out of business. And, allow corrupt fire detector salesman, citing falsified UL tests, to “burn the babies” for dirty profits.
Only time will tell if the Governor will change his course from helping dishonest code makers and regulators profit from and benefit from fire, to actually protecting the public. WEB SITES: www.Firecrusade.com ● www.WorldFireSafetyFoundation.org www.StopTheChildrenBurning.com ● www.AquariumTest.com www.Expertclick.com
RICHARD M. PATTON, FIRE PROTECTION ENGINEER AUTHOR, THE AMERICAN HOME IS A FIRE TRAP President of THE CRUSADE AGAINST FIRE DEATHS, INC. POST OFFICE BOX 196 CITRUS HEIGHTS, CA 95611 • PHONE 916 721 7700
Richard Patton President Crusade Against Fire Deaths, Inc.
Citrus Heights, CA Phone : 916-721-7700 Fax : 916-721-7738
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