N.Y. High-Rises Said to Be Vulnerable to Fire

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The New York Sun

Days after a fire burned for more than five hours in a high-rise office building in downtown Chicago, sending 37 trapped office workers and firefighters to hospitals, fire-safety professionals said it could happen here.


Like the Chicago building, half of Manhattan’s office towers lack fully automated sprinkler systems, and the buildings here probably won’t have the systems for another 15 years.


“New Yorkers are absolutely at risk in their homes and in their offices for the same thing as what happened in Chicago Monday night,” said the northeast regional director of the National Fire Sprinklers Association, Dominick Kass.


At issue are fully automated sprinkler systems that were not mandated in buildings until 1984. Before then, builders could choose between sprinkler systems and a cheaper, more popular option known as compartmentalization, in which buildings are designed so that fireproof walls will contain any fire in an area no greater than 7,500 square feet.


“Sprinklers are not the only choice for fire safety. There is compartmentalization and a number of other safety precautions we employ,” an official at the Department of Buildings who analyzes building codes, James Colgate, said. “Any building that does not have a full sprinkler system in place has compartmentalization.”


“Compartmentalization is a joke,” said Mr. Kass, who is a former firefighter. “The plumber comes and he knocks in a hole for his pipe, then the cable guy comes, and the electrician stops by and they poke their holes in the wall, so soon the walls that are supposed to be fire-stops no longer work.”


Beyond that, Mr. Kass – whose organization earns a profit from membership dues from fire sprinkler companies as well as architecture firms, construction companies, and other building-related firms – said sprinklers stop fires, while compartmentalization can allow everyone and everything within the compartment to burn.


A retired fire marshal who is a fire safety consultant, Jack Murphy, said: “Of the city’s 1,500 commercial high-rises, I’d say more than half don’t have full sprinkler systems in them.”


“Partial sprinklers in a building simply don’t work,” Mr. Kass said. “The building owners put sprinklers in the hallways, but to stop the fires you have to put the sprinklers where the fires start, and fires start where people live – inside the apartments or offices.”


According to the New York Fire Department, fire companies regularly examine sprinkler systems and other fire related issues in the various types of buildings within their administrative district.


Still, no city agency has a comprehensive list of what buildings have automated sprinkler systems.


The Department of Buildings estimates that 200 to 400 commercial buildings have no sprinklers at all. That jibes with an estimate of the Real Estate Board of New York, a trade group, that four-fifths of the roughly 1,500 commercial buildings in Manhattan have some kind of sprinkler system installed.


“I would say that 80% of high-rises have started some sort of sprinkler system in their buildings, but I couldn’t say how many buildings have completed the system. We haven’t done such a survey,” said an official of the Real Estate Board, Marolyn Davenport.


“It is an involved process, where first you must install risers, tanks, and pumps, then as tenants turn over you install the sprinklers,” she said.


“We are aware that the Building Department doesn’t have a comprehensive list of what buildings have sprinklers, which is why we have a July 5 deadline for buildings to register whether they have installed any sprinklers,” said a member of the City Council, Leroy Comrie.


A Democrat of Queens, Mr. Comrie helped draft Local Law 26, passed in June, which requires that full sprinkler systems be installed in all commercial buildings more than 100 feet high within the next 15 years. In 2019, some buildings will be exempted from the sprinkler systems, for reasons including landmark status or undue hardship.


For residential buildings, a law was passed in 1999 requiring that new construction include sprinkler systems, although no law is on the books requiring that older buildings be retrofitted with sprinklers. Instead, fire safety depends on older devices, such as smoke detectors, standpipe access for buildings greater than 75 feet high, and secondary means of egress such as fire escapes.


“The problem won’t be fixed for another 15 years,” Mr. Murphy said, “and then, the building owners will try and get exemptions from the law.”


The cost of putting sprinkler systems into new construction is roughly $2 a square foot, or equal to the cost of installing wall-to-wall carpet, according to Mr. Kass. The cost of installing sprinklers in existing buildings is slightly higher, he said.


“They always put in carpet, but they don’t always put in sprinklers,” Mr. Murphy said.


The Art Deco-style building in Chicago where Monday night’s fire took place is the corporate headquarters of LaSalle Bank. Made of concrete and steel, the 70-year-old landmark building, which underwent a renovation in the early 1990s, was apparently being retrofitted for a sprinkler system but was relying on a standpipe system at the time of the fire on its 29th floor. Officials are still investigating the cause of the fire.


The Chicago city council’s building committee is scheduled to consider an ordinance tomorrow morning requiring that commercial high-rise buildings be retrofitted for sprinklers over the next 12 years, a regulation similar to New York’s Local Law 26.


The New York Sun

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