An industrial setting can provide numerous challenges to fire protection. The industrial process is often hot, messy, and flammable. Industrial warehouses are often acres in area-and can house many layers of combustible materials. There's no doubt that factories and warehouses need more than passive fire protection. Luckily, fire sprinklers can protect even the most fire-prone businesses and factories.
Many business owners doubt that fire sprinklers would be much help if their building caught fire. This is usually because of widely-held beliefs about sprinklers that aren't based in fact. One of those is that water damage can cause as many problems for a business as fire damage. Another is that fire sprinklers aren't powerful enough to extinguish fires burning under certain high-risk conditions.
As we'll show, however, fire sprinklers are remarkably versatile in commercial and industrial settings. Specially designed sprinkler systems can handle almost any fire-in almost any industry. And they can do it without the water damage you'd expect.
How Fire Sprinklers Save Water And Lives
Many people believe that if a fire sprinkler system goes off, all the sprinkler heads will activate-flooding your building and causing extensive water damage.
However, a fire sprinkler system is designed to save water and building damage, as well as lives. When a fire starts, it activates only the sprinkler heads directly above. Most of the time, a single sprinkler head is all it takes to control a fire. Consider this data:
- 90% of all residential fires are controlled by a single sprinkler head.
- A fire sprinkler system uses about 5% of the water a fire brigade would use to douse a fire.
At approximately 2 A.M. on a Wednesday morning, a Rockport boat builder received a call that a fire had broken out in his woodworking shop. He rushed to the scene to find the fire brigade had already arrived. An orange glow was visible through one of the windows in the upper floor.
Upon entry into the building, however, the fire chief found that the fire sprinkler system had controlled the fire. The blaze had been caused by spontaneous combustion of some materials in a trash bin at the top of the stairs on the second floor-directly underneath a sprinkler head. That sprinkler head was the only one activated, and it controlled the fire the minute it started. Fire damage was visible along the walls, but the fire had not reached the ceiling.
Boatbuilding and woodworking workshops are particularly susceptible to fire, because of the materials used in the building process. Varnishes, resins, epoxy, and teak oil all heat up as they cure, making them prone to spontaneous combustion. Wood and wood shavings in the workshop provide plentiful fuel.
As a result, many boat builders experience workshop fires. Many of those fires result in serious damage. This particular case, however, resulted in a charred trash bin and some searing along one wall-nominal damage, compared to what it could have been. The fire sprinkler system did its job.
A single sprinkler head was all it took to extinguish this fire, and that's often the case-even in high-risk buildings such as boatbuilding workshops. Without a fire sprinkler system, the fire brigade would have needed a great deal of water in an attempt to get the fire under control. There's no doubt that the fire sprinkler system saved the day in this case-all thanks to a single sprinkler head. 
How Fire Sprinklers Protected A High-Risk Storage Facility From Fire
High-pile storage facilities have particular fire protection challenges. This storage method was developed around World War II to store large amounts of big, bulky materials efficiently. High-pile warehouses are immense spaces filled with materials stacked on high racks.
Traditional fire sprinkler systems have trouble penetrating to fires that start on lower levels, because of the way materials are stacked. Because the racks are often rearranged to maximize space, multiple levels of fire sprinkler systems aren't a practical solution-the system can't be moved along with the storage racks.
That's why a February fire in a Suffolk high-pile storage facility had the potential to be a serious disaster. A fire started in the worst possible place-at ground level, among a pile of rags that had been used to clean up paint spills. It leaped up into the stacks, igniting combustible materials stored above it.
Luckily, the owners had installed an Early Suppression Fast Response fire sprinkler system. These fire sprinkler systems are often used in high-pile storage facilities and other industrial settings where layout, storage, or other practices create special challenges in protecting the building from fire. These fire sprinkler systems have larger openings in the sprinkler heads, allowing for bigger, heavier drops with more penetrating power. The sprinkler heads are also more sensitive to heat than standard fire sprinkler systems, so their
response time is quicker. In this case, the building needed all the protection it could get. The fire had raced through the lower levels in nearby storage racks within seconds. Two sprinkler heads activated.
When the Suffolk firefighters arrived at the warehouse, they weren't sure at first where the fire was. Walking through the stacks, they came upon an area of light smoke. Here, they found the remnants of a fire that had been almost completely extinguished by the fire sprinkler systems. They were able to finish the fire off with hand-held extinguishers.
This event was a remarkable success for fire sprinkler systems. The odds were stacked against them: the fire started at the ground level, where it's difficult for water to penetrate; and the storage facility primarily housed paints, which are extremely combustible. Even though the fire had spread within seconds among the lower levels, the fire sprinkler system was able to deliver enough water to those levels to completely control the fire in one of the most challenging situations-and all with only two sprinkler heads.
Roofing factories work with asphalt, hot metals, and other incendiary materials-and there are plenty of ways extreme fires can break out. In the case of the Canroof Roofing Factory in Toronto, a large piece of industrial machinery caught fire during a routine maintenance procedure. The blaze grew into a three-alarm fire in just twenty minutes.
That afternoon, firefighters received the call that this Toronto factory was on fire. Rushing to the scene, they found plenty of smoke, but not much fire-it had been controlled by the commercial fire sprinkler system the owners had installed. Within two hours firefighters were able to extinguish the fire completely. No loss of life was reported. The building and much of the equipment was saved, as well.
Many business owners believe commercial fire sprinklers don't pack enough power to protect their building and equipment. However, commercial fire sprinklers are remarkably flexible. They can be designed for all kinds of building uses and risk levels-so business owners can design commercial fire sprinkler systems specifically for their building's needs. With their extraordinary success levels and record of saving billions in damage, it's no wonder so many business owners are seeing the benefits of commercial fire sprinklers.
Fire Sprinkler System Protects Warehouse From Arson Fire
When arsonists set fire to the outside wall of Warehouse Premises in Gloucester, they thought the almost completely wooden building would go up in smoke within the hour. But they didn't count on the fire sprinkler system.
The spacious warehouse was built in the early twentieth century to accommodate timber exporters. Over the years, it's been subdivided to serve as industrial storage space for many different businesses. The building housed many flammable materials, and it could easily have been a fire casualty.
Luckily, the owners had installed a fire sprinkler system decades ago. The sprinkler heads had been replaced around 1968, but the system itself was much older. It still worked, however. The fire burned on the building's exterior for some time before breaking through to the inner space, setting off ten sprinkler heads. The fire sprinkler system controlled the fire on the inside, giving firefighters time to arrive and take care of the exterior blaze.
Firefighters say that this would have been a difficult fire to control, had there been no fire sprinkler system in the building. The warehouse was constructed from and contained mostly flammable materials, and could easily have been consumed before the firefighters could contain the fire.
An explosion at the GlaxoSmithKline processing factory outside of Glasgow injured four people and caused what could have been an extensive fire. The explosion occurred in an area where raw chemicals are treated for use in HIV and malaria drugs.
The building's fire sprinkler systems faced a serious challenge. The raw chemicals in that section of the building were volatile, and the blast was strong enough to blow off an entire side of the building. Even so, they managed to extinguish the resulting fire so effectively that firefighters did not have to go inside.
This isn't the first time such an incident has happened at this facility. In 1999, a similar explosion occurred in an area where penicillin was processed. The company was fined £20,000 for operating under unsafe conditions afterwards.
Chemical factories can be extremely volatile. They often contain raw chemicals, flammable fuels and other combustible materials used in processes that involve high temperatures. When a fire starts in a factory without fire sprinkler systems installed, the result is often total loss. A similar explosion at a non-sprinklered plastics factory killed nine and injured forty workers, and the building was completely destroyed.
Fire sprinkler systems are remarkably effective in industrial settings. With a thorough assessment of a building's risk level, business owners can design a fire sprinkler system that can handle their building's worst-case fire. Even in high-challenge environments such as chemical plants, high-pile storage facilities, and factories that process volatile combustibles, fire sprinklers can keep businesses-and investments-safe from fire.
|
