Legal Research

New York Sets Controlled High Rise Fires in Study of Deadly 'Blowtorch Effect'

By David Badertscher, PLL

Source: Crime and Justice News, February 26, 2007.

In the smoky caldron of a high-rise fire, it is the firefighter's worst nightmare: a door left ajar, a window that suddenly breaks under intense heat and a blast of wind. At its worst, the outcome is catastrophic. Known to firefighters as a blowtorch effect, the instant combination of fire and wind can blast fireballs across rooms and down corridors without warning, within seconds, and at temperatures that render hoses and protective clothing of little use, reports the New York Times. In New York City, at least 11 people, including four firefighters, have died as a direct result of those kinds of fires since 1980, and dozens of others have been badly burned.

"Now, amid an expanding search across the nation for better ways to prevent or contain high-rise infernos, the Fire Department, federal fire experts and engineers from Polytechnic University in Brooklyn have taken over part of Governors Island, the 172-acre former Coast Guard installation off Lower Manhattan, for a week of pyrotechnics intended to test 'alternative strategies and tactics for wind-driven events.' Firefighters from departments in Los Angeles; Chicago; Austin, Tex.; and several other cities across the country will be observing. By Friday, a seven-story brick apartment building will have been gutted by a daily series of fires that will be intentionally set. The building has been laced with fireproof wiring, sensors to record heat and pressure, and video cameras to analyze each blaze: the movement of air, fire and smoke and the impact of wind when it enters the mix. 'We are turning this building into a very large laboratory instrument,' said Daniel Madrzykowski, a fire protection engineer."

New York Times

Full post as published by New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library on February 26, 2008 (boomark / email).