Leveraging Building Intelligence for an Initial Response and Beyond

BY JACK J. MURPHY

Since the late 1980s, the national fire service has been forewarned about lightweight construction, yet only two states1 have adopted legislation to identify lightweight truss construction with a building placarding system. Today, even these warning signs are outdated. There are newer lightweight structural members, such as cold-formed steel and wooden laminated I-beams, and other construction features that also pose potential risk to firefighters. Other dangerous innovations include green buildings with vegetative and solar panel roofs; the exterior finish insulation system building shell, which can cause an outside fire to create internal fire conditions that can quickly overwhelm a building; and prefabricated one- and two-family homes in which a flammable adhesive is used to secure gypsum board to the wall studs so that the fastenings will not pop dents in the board during transportation to the job site. Massachusetts and other states have witnessed how quickly a fire will spread within these homes once the ignition source gets into the walls and void spaces.

Many local fire departments are rich in the types of data relative to types of construction and occupancy, hazardous materials, and fire protection systems but lack data relative to the specific building components within an individual structure. Ask yourself, "Do I feel comfortable today reading the outside of the building?" What might appear from the exterior to be a wood-frame building may in fact have an interior constructed with modern construction techniques (photos 1 and 2). With newer construction techniques, a high-rise building today can be assembled off-site with prefabricated materials. Without leveraging building intelligence for an initial response and beyond, these building features and future construction techniques will continue to challenge the fire service unless we start to harness our work environment with new and available technologies.