memo.

I think I need to request, or make myself? a link/tab/label for Communication and Hi-Rise (Fire) Safety.

I am looking into outdated, un-enforced safety procedures and codes in high-rise buildings. Many buildings need to update their fire alarms and procedures. How effective are radios in the case of a fire? The FDNY has begun using a new radio called UHF portable radios. How are they working out? What is the procedure when a fire alarm fails to sound, how do people know to evacuate the building? How effective is knocking on residents doors in the middle of the night at saving people from smoke and fire?
Talk to NY Fire Department to learn about UHF, standard procedure, problems they face and prospective solutions.
-How quick is arrival of fire trucks? Is it quick enough?
NYFD – Nicholas Scoppetta – Commissioner of Fire Department or
Department of City Planning- Amanda M. Burden – Chair of City Planning Commission

What is a typical cause of fire and what is done to help prevent them from starting? To educate people on the problem?
Tips from FDNY website:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/units/fire_prevention/fire_prev_forms.shtml
Bureau of Fire Prevention:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/units/fire_prevention/fire_prev_index.shtml

National Fire Protection Association: 617-984-7275
NYC Dept. of Buildings Commissioner – Patricia Lancaster – 212-566-3473

What do “emergency preparedness experts” look at when evaluating a building’s situation? What factors vary from building to building that require different hi-rises to have different preparedness plans? How many buildings participate in such screenings and how effective are they?
Talk to Walter Ulmer – president of Remlu Inc. – Emergency Preparedness Planning
800 3rd ave 11th ave.; 212-748-3500

Lastly, I think it is important to note the progress fire safety has made over the past century and to investigate whether or not that progress seems sufficient enough considering the technology now available to us and the tragedies that have occurred due to unsafe conditions, or inadequate responses to danger and fire.

FDNY Fire Safety

I'm sure you guys have found this, but here it is so that you can look at it.

Ways to Keep your Apartment Safe

• Never keep rubbish in the hallway. Make sure it is stored properly and collected regularly.
• Don't put items in the trash chute that are too big and may get stuck. Things caught in the chute easily can turn a fire in the basement into a fire on your floor.
• Be careful not to overload electrical circuits. Short circuits are the cause of many fires.
• Cook with care. Keep a small portable dry chemical fire extinguisher readily available (Class B or K extinguisher). Baking soda is also a handy household item that can be used to smother stove fires.
• Never smoke in bed and make sure that there are no smoldering butts when you empty ashtrays.
• Test smoke detectors weekly and replace batteries twice a year (the beginning & end of Daylight Savings time).
• Make sure that your apartment door is a tight-fitting self-closing type of door in compliance with the fire code. Should your door not self-close, request this repair from your building manager.
• Inspect your exit stair doors. They must be self-closing, snap shut and unlock from both sides. If they don't meet this standard, report it to the superintendent or the Fire Department.

If The Fire is in Your Apartment

• Get everyone out. Stay low as you go out. Close but don't lock all doors in the apartment as you leave.
• Alert others on the floor by knocking on doors. Activate the fire alarm if there is one.
• Go down the nearest STAIRWAY, holding the railing.
• Call the Fire Department from a floor BELOW THE FIRE or from a street fire alarm box outside.

If the Fire is NOT in Your Apartment

• Stay inside rather than entering smoke-filled hallways, especially if the fire is on a floor below your apartment.
• Keep your door closed.
• Seal the door with duct tape or wet sheets and towels. Seal ventilators and any other openings where smoke may enter.
• Turn off air conditioners.
• Fill your bathtub with water. If the front door gets hot, wet it down.
• Unless flames or smoke are coming from below, open your windows a few inches at the top or bottom. Don't break the windows; they may need to be closed later.
• Call the Fire Department with your apartment number and a description of the conditions in your apartment. Firefighters will be directed to your location.
• If you feel you are in grave danger, open a window and wave a bed sheet for firefighters to spot you.

Planning Ahead Can Save Your Life

Things to know:

• The layout of your floor.
• The location of all stair exits from your floor.
• The number of doors between your apartment and the exit stairs. This is essential knowledge to find the exit in the dark.
• Where your apartment key is located. Take the key with you if you are forced to evacuate.
• The location of fire alarm boxes (if your building has them.)

Things to Do

• Keep flashlights ready and in a handy place.
• Install and maintain smoke detectors. Owners of high-rise buildings are required by law to install one detector in each apartment, but its maintenance is up to you.
• Report fire hazards to your superintendent. Blocked exits, piled-up trash, missing exit lights and open fire doors are violations of law. If your superintendent doesn't correct them call the Fire Department (718) 999-2541, and report the condition. Your life may depend on getting the violations corrected.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/safety/firesafety_highrise.shtml

21 Recommendations of Task Force

As recommended in class, we should all be familiar with these

21 Recommendations from the Department of Buildings Task Force

1. Publish structural design guidelines for optional application to enhance robustness and resistance to progressive collapse.
2. Prohibit the use of open web bar trusses in new commercial high-rise construction over 75 feet in height, pending the development of an appropriate standard recommended by NIST.
3. Encourage use of available impact resistant materials in the construction of stair and elevator shaft enclosures until appropriate standards can be developed.
4. Work with the Department of City Planning to exempt floor area of stairwells above minimum requirements from zoning Floor Area Ratio (FAR) calculations to encourage the inclusion of more stairwells or wider stairwells in buildings.
5. Prohibit the use of scissors stairs in high-rise commercial buildings with a floor plate of over 10,000 square feet.
6. Improve marking of the egress path, doors and stairs with photo-luminescent materials and retrofit existing exit signs with either battery or generator backup power.
7. Mandate a full building evacuation plan for non-fire related events.
8. Work with the Department of City Planning to exclude floor area of "fire towers" from Floor Area Ratio (FAR) calculations to encourage their use.
9. Mandate protected vestibules at elevator lobbies in newly constructed occupancy group E buildings greater than 75 feet.
10. Require controlled inspections to ensure that fireproofing is fully intact on all structural building members exposed by subsequent renovations to ensure continued compliance with applicable code requirements.
11. Require all high-rise commercial buildings over 100 feet without automatic sprinkler protection to install a sprinkler system throughout the building within 15 years.
12. Require all occupancy group E buildings to maintain a Building Information Card (BIC) listing a building's vital features.
13. Enhance Fire Department emergency response communications in high rise commercial buildings.
14. Provide additional training for Fire Safety Directors.
15. Limit diameter of fuel oil transfer piping in systems using day tanks.
16. Implement standards for piping that is utilized to distribute fuel oil to equipment without the use of a day tank.
17. Exclude floor drains for elevator vestibule and shafts from being counted as fixtures in calculating normal waste water pipe capacity.
18. Require air intakes in all new construction to be located at least 20' above grade and away from exhaust discharges or off street loading bays.
19. Require controlled inspections of HVAC fire dampers in newly constructed occupancy group E buildings.
20. Wait for the recommendation of Mayoral Commission on adoption of national model code and incorporate Task Force recommendations into any locally specific modifications.
21. Encourage buildings within NYC geographic boundaries and subject to other jurisdictional authority comply with NYC Building Code through collaborative agreements.

13 Recommendations Adopted. Proposed in Legislation September 23, 2003 and Passed June 24, 2004

• Full Sprinkler Protection for Office Buildings. Owners of all existing office buildings 100 feet or greater in height which are not already fully sprinklered will be required to fully sprinkler their buildings on or before January 1, 2019. Owners may apply for an extension of the sprinkler installation deadline in cases of hardship and partial waivers where installation would be impracticable due to structural conditions or interior Landmark designations.
  
  
• Improved Markings, Exit Signage, and Back-up Power to Exit Signs. Exit stairs and doors in new or existing high-rise office buildings will be required to have glow-in-the-dark markings. New and existing high-rise (75 feet or greater) office buildings will be required to install additional signs where exit stairs have horizontal extensions, where stairwell re-entry doors are recessed to assist egress. Existing high-rise office buildings with grandfathered exit signs will be required to provide back-up power to those signs.
  
  
• Restrict the Use of Open Web Steel Joists. The failure of open web steel joists under extreme heat and fire are prime suspects in the WTC collapse. (A possible related cause for the collapses was the failure of spray-on fireproofing to remain adhered to these joists.) This recommendation will prohibit the use of open web steel joists in all new, non-residential high-rise buildings until appropriate fireproofing standards are developed and promulgated by the Commissioner of the Department of Buildings.
  
  
• Inspection of Sprayed-on Fireproofing. Spray-on fireproofing is only effective when it remains on the steel structure to which it was applied. This recommendation mandates that controlled inspections be performed to assess the integrity of spray-on fireproofing during building alterations where such fireproofing is exposed.
  
  
• Impact-Resistant Stair and Elevator Enclosures. In many accounts of the WTC tragedy, the drywall encasing the stairwells in the impact area disintegrated, blocking egress for some. This recommendation would require the use of more impact-resistant stair and elevator enclosures in high-rise office buildings constructed or altered after January 1, 2006. The Commissioner of the Department of Buildings will promulgate appropriate standards by July 1, 2005.
  
  
• Restricted Use of Scissor Stairs. “Scissor” stairs are two intertwining sets of staircases separated by a common wall and floors. While this allows for more square footage in a building, it concentrates the number of exit stairs in one area of the building – which may prevent occupants from escaping during an emergency (for instance, if a fire is blocking the only stairway entrance on a floor.) Under this recommendation, scissor stair assemblies will be prohibited in new high-rise office buildings with relatively large floor plates (over 10,000 square feet).

Other Task Force’s recommendations include:

• Full Building Evacuation Planning. High-rise office buildings will be required to have plans for full building evacuation for events other than fires.
  
  
• Smoke Stop Elevator Vestibules. In new high-rise office buildings, elevators serving four or more stories will be required to have smoke stop elevator vestibules, which will help to prevent smoke from spreading throughout a building during a fire.
  
  
• Controlled Inspections of Fire Dampers. Currently, mechanical ductwork is required under the Building Code to have “dampers,” which close shut to prevent fires from spreading. A specific controlled inspection of these dampers will be required when new ventilation systems are installed.
  
  
• Raising Air Intake Locations. Current code calls for air intakes for mechanical ventilation systems to be a minimum of six feet above ground level. That minimum would be increased to 20 feet above ground, and existing requirements that such air intakes be located away from exhaust discharges and off-street loading bays will be clarified.
  
  
• Prohibition of Oversized Fuel Oil Transfer Piping. To help prevent unauthorized storage of fuel oil, oversized fuel oil transfer piping will be prohibited for all new installations and alterations.
  
  
• Excluding Certain Floor Drains from Normal Fixture Counts. Water that is used to fight fires in high-rises may end up draining into elevator shafts, causing elevator equipment to malfunction. To allow that problem to be avoided, this recommendation will exclude floor drains in elevator shafts and vestibules from wastewater capacity calculations.
  
  
• Setting Standards for Fuel Oil Transfer Piping. New minimum technical standards will be required for fuel oil transfer piping to generators where there is no storage tank above the lowest floor for all new installations and alterations.

Corruption and Construction

The Sunday Times had a great article that says almost exactly what I was thinking-

Highlights-
'The fact is the dollars involved in the construction industry are so great and the opportunities at so many levels for corruption are so broad that this is a problem that will never, ever go away,'' he said.[Robert D. Luskin, a former federal organized crime prosecutor who is special counsel to the Laborers' International Union of North America].

Gordon S. Heddell, the inspector general for the United States Labor Department, said-"Organized crime is like a cancer. Sometimes we treat it and beat it, but sometimes new forms emerge.''

There is a Daily News article that is also great, but totally packed, called "Extreme Makeover, Now," (couldn't link to it, sorry). It takes a less dire view of the unions' role in construction corruption. It also mentions the Brian Kates series in the Daily News which is useful but also very dense. More importantly it makes some of the key points I had hoped to verify, such as the fact that the code was known to not be up to speed nor enforceable by the department of buildings due to the building boom, and the importance of the role of unions (whatever it may be) in this debacle.

I now need to:

1. Follow up on the changes in enforcement not just the code in the wake of [Dept of Building's head] Lancaster's getting lambasted by the Daily News
   
2. Talk to unions

But this has made me more interested in the duality of the nature of unions and how they protect and workers as well as help enforce codes in some ways when they are working correctly and how they are so difficult to control and open to corrupt leadership on the other hand. I think my research should look more at this in the future.

Andrea's update - Fire and stairs

I'm looking at Fire in Tall Buildings, but I've found some handy contact information as well.

Research:
Review of archived press materials (New York Times, Newsday, Village Voice)
Review of NIST reports related to fire codes (WTC compliance and recommendations)
Collected FDNY documents related to past, current and proposed Fire Safety codes
Identifying possible primary sources from archived materials and reports and locating contact information

Possible contacts identified:
NIST lead investigator on WTC report– Sivaraj Shyam-Sunder, 301-975-6713, sivaraj.shyam-sunder@nist.gov

NIST senior engineer - Richard W. Bukowski, 301-975-6853, richard.bukowski@nist.gov - investigated Port Authority compliance with building codes

NYC Dept. of Buildings PIO - Jennifer Givner, 212-566-3473 – endorsed NIST findings against Port Authority

NYC Dept. of Buildings Commissioner – Patricia Lancaster – 212-566-3473

John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, Department of Public Management Professor and advisor to NIST on Fire Management –
Glenn Corbett (212.237.8092, gcorbett@jjay.cuny.edu)

Port Authority Public Information Officer – Steve Coleman – 212-435-7777

Port Authority Public Affairs Director – John McCarthy – 212-435-7777

National Fire Protection Association: 617-984-7275
President - James Shannon –
NFPA Building Fire Protection and Life Safety -
Robert E. Solomon, Assistant Vice President and Jill T. McGovern, Secretary
NFPA Fire Protection Applications and Chemical Engineering - Guy R. Colonna, Assistant Vice President and Patti Mucci, Senior Technical Secretary

NFPA Public Fire Protection - Carl Peterson, Director and Stacey Van Zandt, Project Administrative Supervisor
NFPA Fire Analysis and Research - John R. Hall, Jr., Assistant Vice President and Helen J. Columbo, Secretary

Skyscraper Safety Campaign: http://www.skyscrapersafety.org/
Sally Regenhard, Chairperson; P. O. Box 70, Woodlawn Station, Bronx, NY 10470 - SallyR@SkyscraperSafety.org
AND
Monica Gabrielle, Co-Chairperson; P. O. Box 70, Woodlawn Station
Bronx, NY 10470 - monicagabrielle@earthlink.net

Notable information culled from materials:

Per NYT article: very few of recommendations from report after 1993 WTC bombing were effected by 9/11/01 - "It just didn't happen," said Patricia Lancaster, now the city buildings commissioner. NICE.

Per NYT article:
NYC building codes called for 4 staircases in each tower, but there were only 3 in each – total 6. 5 were destroyed by planes – one in south tower was used by at least 18 survivors.
“In the north tower, however, no one above the 91st floor was able to get out, even though about 1,000 are likely to have survived the impact of the hijacked airplane.”
- 4th staircases were required because Windows on the World (north tower) and observatory (south tower) had occupancy ratings over 1,000
- The Port Authority maintains that the stairway was not required.
The Port Authority is not bound by NYC codes, but claims to "meet or exceed"standards.
"On the issue of the fourth staircase, we will respectfully disagree with the N.I.S.T. findings and maintain that we met the city building codes in this area," said Steve Coleman, an agency spokesman.

Per NYT article: “Nationally, between 1989 and 1999, no more than five civilians were killed in 6,900 reported high-rise office building fires, according to statistics complied by the National Fire Protection Association.”

Per NYT article: “Dr. Sunder said that fully equipped firefighters - carrying nearly 100 pounds of gear up stairs - begin to reach their physiological limits about the 15th or 20th floor, and that it takes about two minutes to climb per floor. For people on the 60th floor of a building that has lost power, Dr. Sunder said, "help is actually a few hours away. We did not look at other buildings, but we are very confident in our recommendations."

And, a good summary of NIST findings by the NYT re: building design flaws and the staircase issue (I've edited below) - full story here:
“In a sobering lesson drawn from one of the day's great successes -- the escape of nearly everyone below the points of impact, about 14,000 people -- the report said that it had taken about twice as long to go down a single flight of stairs as had been projected by the current engineering standards for tall buildings. The buildings were only half full, investigators said, and if the attack had come at a time when they were filled to occupancy, the evacuation would not have been successful."

The impact changed tower structures in two critical ways... First, of the 47 columns in the core of each building, 9 were either severed or badly damaged in the north tower, and 11 in the south tower. Second, the impact dislodged the fireproofing that was sprayed on the floors and the columns. As the fires ignited by the jet fuel burned, the floors were weakened.

The floors played an important role in the structures, because they connected the exterior supports... to the columns hidden in the cores of the buildings. As the unprotected floors were weakened by fire, the exterior columns bowed inwards. In the north tower, they had moved 55 inches off center a few minutes before the collapse; in the south tower, they were 20 inches off center. As those columns became unstable, the building load shifted, but the instability was too great and the cascade of collapse began.

Much of the jet fuel burned outside the buildings in a fireball, but enough remained inside to ignite the office furnishings and building contents.

...the investigation ... raised serious questions about the adequacy of the original fireproofing applied to the steel in the towers. But in the areas where the fires were most severe, the amount of fireproofing that originally had been applied was ''moot'' because whatever had been there was knocked off by the planes.

During the design of the trade center, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had decided to use a new version of the city building code that did not require as many staircases as the earlier edition. Instead of six staircases, including a specially reinforced fire escape, the trade center had three stairs in each tower. The investigators determined, though, that even the liberalized code required a fourth staircase, to accommodate the more than 1,000 people expected in the restaurant at the top of the north tower and at the observation deck atop the south tower.

As an interstate agency, the Port Authority is not bound by local building codes, but it had publicly pledged to ''meet or exceed'' the city code in building the trade center. However, the institute investigators determined that the Port Authority had not supplied enough staircases.

One of the documents included in yesterday's report showed that the Port Authority was eager to cut down on the amount of space devoted to stairs.

''The tower core should be redesigned to eliminate the fire towers and to take advantage of the more lenient provisions regarding exit stairs,'' wrote Malcolm P. Levy, the Port Authority's chief planning engineer, who is now deceased.

In the impact area of the north tower, the three staircases were about 70 feet apart and were destroyed immediately.

In the south tower, the plane hit on floors where the three staircases were about 200 feet apart, and one of them survived at least partially intact.

Next questions:
What are current/proposed requirements regarding staircases, number and dimensions?
What are ideal (according to NIST and NFPA) standards?

Department of Buildings' Glossary

Here's a glossary of DOB terms. Better to help us decode Buildinguese, no?

Violations

Ever wonder what the top 25 building violations in this city were?

And what those violations will cost you?