Updated Codes Save Lives

There’s a fire that happened recently that you probably didn’t hear much about–unless you were monitoring our fire prevention communication circles. The reason it isn’t making national news is because 700 people who were attending a New Year’s Eve celebration at a nightclub in Seattle didn’t die. I think the only reason it’s generating any news at all is because: 1) someone deliberately set the fire, 2) the club caters to a gay clientele, and 3) two military personnel were credited for putting the fire out.

Not surprisingly, many of the articles making the rounds in the media don’t tell the whole story.

Nightclub Fire

No one disputes the fact that, on the night of the celebration, a man allegedly ignited gasoline he poured in the stairway leading to the club. The fire is still under active investigation by the Seattle Police Department, so at this point few facts about why he did so are public knowledge. Many locals are concerned this was a hate crime directed at the clientele frequenting the club. Fortunately, an arrest has been made in the case.

The local news repeated the story that two courageous individuals, one retired military and one still active-duty, took portable fire extinguishers and attacked the fire. They also highlighted the fact that there was water damage from the fire sprinkler system, so my curiosity was piqued. If there was sufficient heat to activate the fire sprinklers, what role did the fire extinguishers play in suppressing the fire?

Code Updates

For the record, I don’t want to take anything away from the people responsible for using extinguishers to battle a fire. But the Seattle Fire Department (SFD) is trying to draw attention to the contributions that the fire sprinklers played in suppressing the fire, and to correct news stories that focused more on the water damage caused by the sprinklers than the tragedy that was avoided.

Kyle Moore, SFD’s public information officer, has been doing damage control on the fire, with some positive effect. He sent me information on the relationship between the recent updates to codes in Washington State and Seattle that helped protect the patrons in this situation. Resulting directly from the Station Nightclub Fire in 2002, where 100 people lost their lives in a building with no fire sprinklers, Washington State and Seattle successfully adopted model code requirements that mandated a retrofit of fire sprinklers in nightclubs serving more than 100 people. According to local records, the nightclub in Seattle met those requirements.

Safety Precautions in Place

The nightclub had adequate exits, so patrons were not confronted with a situation like the Happy Land social club fire in New York in 1990. So a combination of adequate exits, a fire sprinkler system, a functioning alarm system, and, at least to some extent, fire extinguishers, prevented a national headline from rising out of Seattle.

Washington is to be credited with making sure the model codes that came out of the Station Nightclub fire were adopted by law. More importantly, Seattle should be given credit for following up and making sure the law was enforced. The owner of the Seattle club also deserves some credit for retrofitting the club with updated systems and fire sprinklers.

Lessons Learned

By the time this article is published, you’ll really have to search hard to find reports on this fire, as even local interest is already starting to wane. But if we’re to turn the event into something positive, we need to know the right stories to tell and find the right time to tell them.

Interestingly, the Seattle story generated a lot of “could it happen here too?” reports from local media, which could lead to a renewed focus on compliance with existing laws.

If you still have to fight for fire sprinklers in your area, this story might make a good case study that you can use as an example of what didn’t happen, but would have under different circumstances.