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21
vault fully involved, and all four sprinkler heads flowing water, the water extinguished as little as 10 percent of the fire.
The rest of the fire's heat energy was being vented to the outside or was spreading throughout the rest of the building, continuing the spread of the fire to other vaults.
The removal of two heads in each vault presented another problem to the efficiency of the system. Each vault was a little less than 700 cubic feet in volume, the maximum allowed by NFPA 40.
Originally, the sprinker heads were evenly spaced so that each head covered about 108 cubic feet. Wlien the two heads at the end of the line were removed, the others were not relocated. This left the head now at the end of the line with a volume of over 300 cubic feet to protect.
This was three times its intended capacity.
A building's fire protection features are intended to fit together, much like the pieces of an arch, to form a system of protective features. eTust as the removal of one stone from an arch starts its downfall, the elimination or reduction of one element of a building's fire protection system can initiate a chain of events leading to a total failure of that system.
In building A, the inadequate fire doors, the subverted sprinkler system, the imsealed walls that permitted the travel of flammable vapors literally through the walls, are examples of just such a downfall. But there were other factors in Suitland that led to the problems on December 7.
Housekeeping was shoddy — containers of film were left on the floor in cardboard boxes; there was no early warning or fire detection system ; the film cans were not vented to relieve the gases of decomposition, as is recommended by Eastman Kodak ; the film vaults themselves were not vented to remove these same gases ; the air conditioning system was not working properly ; some vault doore were left standing open by workers, and the employees of the facility, who should have been familiar with the dangers of the material they worked with daily, apparently did not correct the situation.
An earlier report of the fire would have been possible, but the water flow alarm switch, which was installed in early 1978 to detect the flow of water in the sprinker system and transmit an alarm to the guard office, did not work due to being improperly connected, according to the GSA report.
With all of this going against us, the inevitable happened, and fire broke out on December 7. Shortly thereafter, the buildings' occupants hastily exited the bunker for various parts of the Federal Center.
Due to the distance they had to travel, the first fire reports came from persons in the neighborhood, not NAKS employees.
When our units arrived on the scene, they were not met by anyone. They saw a car parked by building A, and the front door was ajar.
This indicated the strong possibility of a trapped person. Fully aware of the dangers they were facing, they entered the building to search for victims.
A second crew of firefighters followed the first crew into the building to serve as a backup, while a third crew was assigned to ventilate the building.
[See app. 13 for chart.]