Occupant Tenability in Single Family Homes: Part I—Impact of Structure Type, Fire Location and Interior Doors Prior to Fire Department Arrival

Abstract

Abstract. This paper describes an experimental investigation of the impact of structure geometry, fire location, and closed interior doors on occupant tenability in typical single family house geometries using common fuels from twenty-first century fires. Two houses were constructed inside a large fire facility; a one-story, 112 m 2 , 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom house with 8 total rooms, and a two-story 297 m 2 , 4-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom house with 12 total rooms. Seventeen experiments were conducted with varying fire locations. In all scenarios, two bedrooms had doors remaining open while the door remained closed in a third bedroom immediately adjacent to the open door bedrooms. Temperature and gas measurement at the approximate location of a crawling or crouching trapped occupant (0.9 m from the floor) were utilized with the ISO 13571 fractional effective dose (FED) methodology to characterize occupant tenability up to the point of firefighter intervention. The FED values for the fire room were higher for heat exposure than for toxic gases, while target rooms reached highest FED due to CO/CO 2 exposure. The closed interior door decreased FED significantly, with the worst case scenario resulting in a 2% probability of receiving an incapacitating dose compared to the worst case scenario for an open bedroom of 93% probability of receiving an incapacitating dose. In fact, in 7 of the 17 experiments, the closed interior door resulted in a less than 0.1% chance of an occupant receiving an incapacitating dose prior to firefighter 'intervention.'

Thermal response to firefighting activities in residential structure fires: impact of job assignment and suppression tactic

“…Temperatures that occupants might experience while crawling on the floor (e.g. 0.9 m) are also similar to those previously reported (Kerber 2013;Traina et al 2017).…”

Ex-Vivo Porcine Skin Model for Estimation of Trapped Occupant Burn Risk in Pre- and Post-suppression Fire Environments

“…In fact, in Location 2 (behind a closed bedroom door), subdermal temperatures remain higher than the surface temperatures. These results again reinforce the ability of a closed door to protect these simulated occupant locations from thermal burns [41]. It is important to note that perfusion and perspiration in live skin will likely reduce these temperature and can be incorporated in future work through numerical interpretation of these experimental data [e.g.…”

“…Data are presented here in a relative format-to compare changes in the conditions after fire attack relative to those present immediately prior to water application. As has been shown before [41], despite the controlled laboratory environment within which these full-sized structure fires were conducted, there was important variability in fire development at the time of water application that could make comparison of raw magnitudes misleading. These data are grouped based on Test Type (1-3) and fire attack method (interior only vs exterior-to-exterior) where applicable.…”

Development of Fireground Exposure Simulator (FES) Prop for PPE Testing and Evaluation

“…A portion of this variability may be reduced by utilizing the prop inside a large environmental enclosure or test laboratory such as that present at UL, NIST or other large fire laboratories around the world. However, it is important to note that any live-fire scenario can have important variability in conditions even when using identical fuel packages [26,27]. Thus, conducting serial trials using the FES prop can expose PPE samples a range of conditions that may be present during live fire events.…”