The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Students learn about fire safety
Oneida Fire Department holds live burn demo for middle school students
WAMPSVILLE, N.Y. >> Students looked on in shock Thursday as a 30-foot column of black smoke rose over the Otto Shortell Middle School in less than a minute, spreading ash as it went.
“I didn’t really expect it to go up that quick,” said Makayla Chesebro, an eighth-grade student at OSMS. “You’d think with the couch being as thick as it is, it would take longer to burn.”
The couch in question was one of two set up in identical pods by the Oneida Fire Department to demonstrate the ferocity of a house fire. One of the pods had a sprinkler system, but the other did not, and it was that second pod that ignited and was consumed in less than a minute.
Chesebro would have been right 20 to 30 years ago when she said she didn’t think it would catch fire that fast. She and the other sixth-, seventhand eighth-grade students at OSMS have been learning fire prevention through the week and for the final day, the Oneida Fire Department came out to demonstrate a live burn. Joining students and faculty were Ward 5 Councilor Jim Chamberlain, Ward 3 Councilor James Coulthart and Assemblyman John Salka, R-121.
“Today’s household furnishings are totally different,” Deputy Chief Timothy Cowan said. “We call it ‘solidified gasoline.’ All the plastics and synthetics burn at such an extreme rate. In years past, there was this belief that there’s a lot of time to escape the house. Now, we’re talking about literally seconds.”
Chamberlain said this is the third fire demo at OSMS he’s been to and it never gets old. “It’s amazing,” Chamberlain said. “It’s a real eye-opener.”
Getting to see the fire up close, eighth-grade student Natalie King was shocked and thought what was left of the room was a complete mess. She couldn’t believe a fire could spread that fast.
After setting up the pods, members of the OFD carefully lit the contents of a wastebasket on fire and Cowan narrated the progression of the fire. The students visibly flinched when the fire reached an inferno, feeling the heat from around 30 to 40 feet away and staring
on in shock.
Firefighters quickly put the fire out and then demonstrated the same scenario with the room outfitted with sprinklers. Instead of the fire engulfing the whole room, the sprinkler system kicked on shortly after the fire detector sounded and doused the flames, leaving firefighters to extinguish the embers.
Salka said he remembers when he had his basic firefighter training in 1994 and knew people didn’t have long to get out of the house. “You have this new synthetic furniture and it all just goes so quick,” Salka said.
All-in-all, it took 47 seconds for the room to reach flashover — or when everything gets so hot it all ignites at once.
Getting a look at the room with the sprinkler system before the demo, Coulthart asked Cowan if smoke detectors just aren’t enough anymore.
“If you can have suppression and fire alarms at the same time, that increases survivability,” Cowan said. “You don’t much time anymore. You have, at best, a minute.”
Cowan said while some homes can be retrofitted, some people can’t afford it and instead, sprinkler systems should come standard with a home. “We need to pass [laws] for new construction,” Cowan said. “You can’t build a house without a smoke detector. Sprinklers are going to be the same way.”
“Once they become a residential feature, the price is going to drop,” Salka said.
“It’s not a law in New York, so the prices for a sprinkler system are way up there,” Cowan said. “You look at a place like Scottsdale, Ariz., where sprinklers have been in the codes for 30 years, it costs $1.35 a square foot to install. That’s it. You spend more on your refrigerator.”
The difference between the two rooms was obvious after the demo. Students were allowed to walk by and inspect the damage of both fires before returning to class. And while the sprinkler roomwasmissing the curtains, a couch was a little scorched and the entire room was soaked, it didn’t even come close to the amount of damage done to the non-sprinkler room.
Cowan said a home sprinkler system isn’t designed to put out a fire, but instead give residents a chance to escape a fire before it’s too late.
“When the smoke detector goes off, you don’t have time to figure out what’s happening,” Cowan said.
To learn more about home sprinkler systems, visit the National Fire Protection Association at https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Campaigns/ Fire-Sprinkler-Initiative