Why is Fire Safety such a big deal in High rise buildings?

Architect Reena Mukherjee looked up in horror at the smoke billowing from the 27th floor of the building where her own swanky luxury apartment was located in Worli. Her newly built penthouse flat was located on the top floor of these 39 storied glasses clad high-rise. The fire was raging and as she watched some of the glass panels shattering and the flames leapfrogging towards the floor above. The high winds were fanning the fire burn even more vigorously and it looked like very soon the entire structure above the 27th floor will be fully gutted. Only divine intervention can help. She prayed fervently with all her heart. “OH God please do something. Please let the fire douse. Please save my family and all those people who are stuck in the building and fighting for their lives”. Will her prayers be answered?

This is a familiar scenario which plays out many times a year across India and any one of us could be in the place of Reena Mukherjee. Our colleagues, our family members or even we ourselves could be stuck in a similar situation. Unfortunately there is no one on earth who can give you a guarantee that the building which houses your office or home can be made absolutely fire proof . But if the architect, consultant, and developer of such superlative high-rise buildings decide to keep fire safety as a priority then they can definitely make the building extremely safe against fire accidents.

Fire Safety and Fire Engineering is a vast and highly technical subject which is yet to become popular in India despite its criticality. When we speak about Fire Safety, we need to understand that this entire subject can be categorized into active fire systems and Passive systems.

Active fire protection systems are the most visible and most popular part of fire protection systems in India. The NBC 2016 has extensively prescribed the different requirements of such systems and awareness for these are relatively high in India. Active Fire Systems include those equipment which get activated, either manually or automatically, as soon as a fire happens within a building and the prime focus of active fire systems is to bring the fire under control and eventually douse it.

While active fire systems play a very critical role during a fire accident in a building there is another equally important role played by some products silently within the building which effectively prevent the fire and smoke from spreading and compartmentalize them within a given zone for a specified period of time. These products which are built into the building during construction and play a very critical role in preventing the spread of smoke and fire are called Passive fire protection systems.

The effectiveness of these passive fire protection systems can only be ascertained when each of them are put through vigorous testing process as per established standards. There are two kinds of testing to check the performance of any passive fire products.

1. Resistance to fire which studies those properties of materials or their assemblies that prevents or retards the spread of excessive heat, hot gasses or the flames across different compartments in the building during a fire. The classification for Resistance to fire will be as follows
E30 to E120 where E denotes the ability of the product or system to have integrity to prevent the spread of flames and smoke/gasses and 30, 60, 90,120 denoting the number of minutes the product or system successfully stops this. (The NBC specifies EW120 and EI 20 as the bare minimum requirement for metal and glazed doors and partitions used in the escape corridors and refuge areas.)

EW 30 to EW 120 where EW denotes the ability of the product to not just stop the spread of fire and smoke but also ensure that the radiation passing through the glass and frame of the system is always below 15KW per Sq mt per hour. This is the minimum radiant heat required to have spontaneous combustion happening on the non fire side during a fire.

EI 30 to EI 120 where EI denotes not just the fire-resistant properties but also the insulation properties of the system thus ensuring that the maximum temperature on the non fire side never exceeds 185 degrees cent and the average temperature does not exceed 140 degrees cent.

2. Reaction to fire classifies materials based on how they behave during a fire to withstand fire exposure. This can be broadly classified for the following characteristics
1.Flammability from A1, A2 to F where A is non flammable and F is unfit to be tested since it is highly combustible.
Smoke Index from S0 to S3 where 0 means low smoke and 3 is heavy smoking if the product is on fire
Burning Droplets from d0 to d2 where 0 means no burning droplets are produced during fire and 3 being high number of burning droplets falling down which can create secondary fires.

Based on these characteristics there are two kinds of agencies who certify the products to be used in buildings.

1. ISO17025 accredited independent laboratories who can test the products for either resistance or reaction to fire and issue test certificates classifying them according to the relevant standards.

2. International Certifying bodies that use the data generated during the testing either in their own laboratories or in third party accredited laboratories and then classify the products either according to international standards or their own (UL). These certifying bodies will also audit the manufacturing process of the manufacturers and undertake to do random tests on samples to ensure that every product sold is as per the tested specification. There are several such agencies worldwide and UL, INTERTEK, FM GLOBAL, ELEMENT are a few well known brands. A product which is certified by any of these entities gives a reassures the end user that the performance of products used by him will be consistent and will adhere to the relevant standards.

The most important aspect to be kept in mind is that when a system gets tested and certified the certification holds good only if all the components which were used in the original test are used while the system is manufactured in the factory. Even if one component is replaced they the validity of the test report will become void.

Once tested products and systems are used in the building the risk of fire incurring and spreading reduces drastically. The chart attached below gives the details of most commonly used passive products in buildings for fire safety and their relevant testing specifications

SL. NO.	Product	Standard
1.	Cavity barrier or smoke seals	BS 476 EN 13501.2 EN 1366-4 IS 18190
2.	Air condition duct	EN 1366 - 1
3.	Duct Damper	EN 1366 - Part 2
4.	Non load baring partition other than brick wall	EN 1363 - 1 EN 1363 - 2
5.	Penetration Seals	EN 1366 - 3
6.	Intumescent collars / Tapes	EN 1366 - 3
7.	Fire resistant boards	EN 1366 - 1
8.	Ablative paint for cables	EN 1366 - 4 BS 476 EN 13501 - 1 EN 13501 - 2
9.	Fire rated doors/Partitions	EN 1363 - 1 EN 1363 – 2 IS 3614 EN 13501 – 2 IS16945 UL 10B EN 1364 – 2 IS ISO 834 Part 8

Fire Safety is a vast subject which has gained immense interest in India in the recent past .However in most advanced countries this is a very critical subject which is dealt by professionals with the utmost seriousness it deserves. The objective of the fire specialist would be to make the building as fire resistant as possible by ensuring that only tested and certified products are used in the project. No doubt such tested and certified products would be more expensive but then that is the price one needs to pay to keep human life safe in these buildings.

Fire happens in a building mostly as an accident and sometimes as a result of arson. Irrespective of the causes let us stick to how its impact on the people who occupy that building and the building itself can be minimized. The focus for the fire consultant would be to design the building in such a way that even if there is an outbreak of fire it is confined to a limited zone or compartment for as long as it’s necessary. This gives adequate time to the occupants to evacuate safely out of the building, without panicking, while the active systems get triggered and start working to douse the fire. At the same time this will also allow the fire rescue teams to access the hot zone without any hindrance.

When it comes to facades there are only two critical areas which need to be taken into consideration to make the facade resist the fire from spreading. The hundreds of fire accidents which continue to occur worldwide offer fire professionals enough clues about why the fires occur and what could have been done to prevent it and even if it was not preventable how to minimize the losses. It is important that every professional working on the design and execution of high-rise project keep fire safety in mind while designing. Fire can be accident but the consequential damage from that fire need not be left to chance. With all the information on fire safety freely available on the net no one can take umbrage under the excuse that they did not have adequate inputs while designing the project

Even within the building care must be taken to minimize the use of inflammable products made of wood or polymers and make the building more resistant to fire. Certified passive products must be used wherever necessary in the HVAC ducts, cable trays and pipes as they travel through the building from one compartment or one floor to another. This applies to both residential as well as commercial buildings. Passive fire products get to work in the event of a fire and prevent the smoke and fire from spreading through the HVAC ducts and the space above the false ceiling. We all

know smoke kills more people in the event of a fire than fire itself and therefore every fire safety system must also consider the risk of smoke spread along with fire. All the doors facing the escape corridors must be fire rated to keep these zones free of smoke and fire for at least 120 minutes. This will allow the occupants to reach safe zones without panicking. The fire rated doors and partitions must be tested and certified as a complete system and not assembled by the supplier with test certificates from individual component manufacturers. Such a product has no one agency giving the guarantee and in the event of a fire it will only lead to finger pointing going round to take the blame when the system fails.

Damage to life and property can avoided or at least minimized if a proper fire safety design is build into a high rise project. Then even in the event of a fire no one needs to panic as there is a built I system to ensure that the occupants reach a safe zone without any loss or injury.

Coming back to the Reema Mukerjee story, she remembered clearly the focus she and her team had put in while designing the fire safety systems, both active and passive for this project and she believed that these systems would ensure that this fire does not go out of control. Half hour later she got a call from her parents telling her that they along with all other family members are safe and the fire services have reached the spot and doused the fire. Under these circumstances the fire code book that she had referred was a life saver like any other holy book she had read.

Afiti Global Fire testing Laboratory Pvt. Ltd. & Winwall Technology India Pvt. Ltd

P.Jothi Ramalingam Ponnusamy is the Director of Afiti Global Fire Testing Laboratory Pvt Ltd and Winwall Technology India Pvt Ltd.He has been associated with the architectural aluminium industry since 1990 as an anodising and powder coating specialist. He is a presently a member of the Doors, Windows,and Shutters Sectional Committee, CED 11 and CED 13 which is responsible for creating the Indian Standards for design, fabrication, testing and installation of doors, windows, and shutters. Jothi Ramalingam has constantly strived to create more test facilities in India for the benefit of the Indian façade & fenestration industry, Fire Safety and thus help the industry to improve its quality and compete successfully internationally facility to test the fire propagation characteristics of exterior wall assemblies containing combustible components, becoming India’s first accredited privately held facility for processed glass and to conduct cyclic testing of hardware used in the window and door industry. Jothi Ramalingam is now involved in commissioning a new resistance and reaction to fire testing laboratory to test products used in the construction industry for its fire-resistant properties thus contributing to making high rise buildings safer from the risks associated with fire.