NFPA's Fire & Life Safety Conference offers more than 60 educational sessions in four targeted tracks presented in three action-packed days by staff experts and committee members.
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NFPA 101®, Life Safety Code®, is the most widely-used source for occupant safety strategies, addressing the construction, protection, and occupancy features in various occupancies. Today, as part of the post-conference seminar offerings at the NFPA Fire & Life Safety Conference in Orlando, Joe Versteeg, Principal of Versteeg Associates, and a Life Safety Code technical committee member, reviewed the major updates to the 2012 edition of the code.
Navigating the 2012 edition of NFPA 1, Fire Code, was the theme of a special two-day post-conference seminar at NFPA’s Fire & Life Safety Conference in Orlando. NFPA Regional Manager Jim Dolan led this all-new session, leading participants through identifying the purpose and scope of the code and how to easily find information the document, and apply its provisions correctly. Over the course of this two-day event, attendees are gaining a more thorough understanding of life safety and property protection issues, including automatic sprinklers, standpipes, operating features, occupancies, exits, and fire lanes.
Adopted in jurisdictions throughout North America, NFPA 1 contains extracts from and references to more than 130 NFPA codes and standards to address the full range of fire protection and life safety issues.
The 2012 edition of NFPA 1 includes new requirements for:
sprinklers in all new buildings three or more stories in height
carbon monoxide detection in new residential occupancies
floor fire protection for new non-sprinklered one- and two-family dwellings
and other changes that benefit building occupant safety
In a special two-day session as part of NFPA’s Fire & Life Safety Conference in Orlando, Dana Haagansen, P.E., a member of the NFPA 13 technical committee, led attendees through the ins and outs of how to calculate and review sprinkler system hydraulics. Based on guidelines in NFPA 13, Standard for the Installation of Sprinkler Systems, this class gave participants the opportunity to learn to determine occupancy classification and sprinkler discharge calculations, and to perform hands-on branchline and whole system calculations.
How is the 2012 edition of the newly-organized NFPA 99, Health Care Facilities Code, addressing the safety challenges in health care facilities?
In today’s special one-day post-conference seminar, Jim Lathrop, FSFPE, Vice President of Koffel Associates, and member of the NFPA 99 Fundamentals Technical Committee, reviewed the document, which features a new risk-based, rather than occupancy-based approach. Today, medical technologies and procedures can be based in a variety of locations, “so it doesn’t matter what the name is on the building,” said Jim. “What matters is that the risks to the patient are addressed.”
Jim also reviewed other major changes in the 2012 edition of NFPA 99, including new chapters on information technology and communication systems, plumbing, and security management. The document also includes a totally-rewritten chapter 12 on emergency management, which features “lessons learned” from recent disasters and better integration with NFPA 1600, Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity Programs.
NFPA's Michele Steinberg, Project Manager for the Firewise Communities program, talks about lessons learned from the devastating wildland fire seaso, including new research on how homes are burning down, and better ways to communicate safety messages to homeowners who live in the wildland urban interface.
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A special issue of NFPA Journal® is devoted to the wildland fire problem. Read about NFPA’s role in teaching homeowners, builders, firefighters, and community leaders how to prepare homes to resist ignition from wildland fire, new international initiatives, the environmental impact of wildland fires, and a look at the NFPA codes and standards that deal with the wildland urban interface.
In September, NFPA Fire Service Specialist Ryan Depew traveled to central Texas, where he participated in structure fire investigations related to the Bastrop County Complex Fire, which had destroyed more than 1,500 homes.
NFPA's Michele Steinberg, manager of the Firewise Communities Program, talks about the recent wildland fire season, and resources available to help homeowners and community leaders best prepare for fire.
NFPA’s Firewise Communities program encourages local solutions for wildfire safety by involving homeowners, community leaders, planners, developers, firefighters, and others in the effort to protect people and property from wildfire risks.
NFPA along with the U.S. Forest Service and a coalition of wildland fire safety agencies, are collaborating to develop a new Fire Adapted Communities program. The effort members will help communities understand and accept their wildfire risk and take pro-active steps to improve the safety and resilience of their homes, landscapes, infrastructure and community assets.
NFPA’s Matt Klaus, Senior Fire Protection Engineer, spoke at the Fire & Life Safety Conference in Orlando about the full range of NFPA documents that deal with automatic fire sprinklers. Matt explained the reason that NFPA 13R, the document that deals with the installation of automatic fire sprinklers in residential occupancies, will soon have a new title. He also provides an update on requirements on the use of antifreeze in sprinkler systems and the latest research that’s being done and how it is contributing to changes in NFPA’s sprinkler standards.
What lessons about high rise building safety – from sprinkler protection to exit stairways, and everything in between – did we learn in the 90 years between the 1911 Triangle Waist Company fire in New York City and the World Trade Center tragedy in 2001?
During today’s luncheon at the NFPA Fire & Life Safety Conference in Orlando, Robert Solomon, P.E., Division Manager of NFPA’s Building Fire Protection Division, shed new light on the Triangle fire, “one of history’s earliest episodes of a fire in a high-rise building,” he said. “The fear it struck into the hearts of citizens was profound and significant.”
One-hundred-forty-six people died that day, approximately 60 perished by jumping from the 9th floor of the building. “We see numerous fire hazards and other problems that proved deadly once the fire broke out,” said Robert. “These included flammable and combustible fuel load, lack of adequate exits, locked doors, crowded and cramped conditions, and lack of built-in fire protection measures like sprinklers.”
Change did occur in the aftermath of the Triangle fire. In the following video, produced by NFPA for the 100th anniversary of the tragedy in 2011, NFPA President Jim Shannon talks about the driving force of Frances Perkins, a social worker who witnessed the Triangle fire with her own eyes.
Robert then discussed the politics and planning that led to the construction of the World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, a project that took seven years to complete. WTC 1 and 2 featured “framed tube” construction and were the first buildings in the world to utilize the concept of an express elevator system.
In 1993, a bombing at the World Trade Center forced the evacuation of both towers. An NFPA investigation focused on fire department response, building system performance, evacuation. Robert said that many lessons learned after that bombing had a direct positive impact on the events that would unfold at the site eight years later.
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, NFPA launched a widespread effort to strengthen codes and standards for first responder safety, the built environment, emergency preparedness, and more. Ten years later, those efforts continue — and they’re making America safer.
Read details in NFPA Journal’s special 10th anniversary report on 9/11, including a report on first responder safety and an interview with an NFPA investigator who recalls his work at Ground Zero.
Thomas Suehr, CPCU, a Senior Specialist in the Engineering Technical Unit at Liberty Mutual Commercial Markets, spoke at NFPA's Fire & Life Safety Conference in Orlando about the insurance industry perspective on dust hazard protection. Mr. Suehr, a member of several NFPA technical committees, also spoke about the role of codes and standards in helping the insurance industry work with clients to prevent or mitigate combustible dust explosions.
Guy Colonna, P.E., NFPA Industrial and Chemical Engineering Division, describes the concept behind eight NFPA documents that deal with dust forming a "basis of safety". He also details some of the significant changes to NFPA's dust standards.
LOOKING BACK Read a 2010 NFPA Journal® article that features Ron Allen, senior director for environmental health, safety, and quality at Imperial Sugar Company and a member of NFPA, who helped devise and implement safety features in all of its facilities. In this article, Alan R. Earls details the February 7, 2008, explosion at an Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, GA, that destroyed much of the facility and killed 14 employees.
The mission of the international nonprofit NFPA, established in 1896, is to reduce the worldwide burden of fire and other hazards on the quality of life by providing and advocating consensus codes and standards, research, training, and education.
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