[BC] Skyscrapers and fires

[Fred Gleason]

On Tuesday 06 March 2007 01:00, "Chuck Lakaytis" <chuck at akpb.org> wrote:
> Vincent Dunn is perhaps the worlds leading expert in fighting high rise
> fires. http://vincentdunn.com/wtc.html

Interesting read.  Mr. Dunn makes some good points, but I think his central 
recommendation (that of scrapping 'performance' codes in favor of 
'specification' ones) is flawed.  Clearly some of the 'performance standards' 
current when WTC was built need to be revised (and, I suspect, have been 
already), but to prescribe specific construction techniques as part of a 
building code would in effect freeze the state of the art into whatever was 
current at the time of the code's promulgation.  I can remember when the FCC 
used to do this sort of thing too (how many remember the old 'how many spare 
tubes of a particular type must a station stock?' rules from before the 
1980s?)  I for one wouldn't care to go back to that level of micro-managed 
regulation -- I don't see why the building trades should be forced to either.

Cheers!


|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. |               Chief Developer               |
|                           |               Paravel Systems               |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|      A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man       |
|      contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.      |
|                                     -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery         |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|