jaydeehess
Penultimate Amazing
Oh, Jaydee - I feel you've hit a whole bunch of nails on their heads with that one !
As a thirty year building veteran in the U.K. I looked in horror at the speed at which the fire spread in both Towers and have absolutely no doubt that no such laxed attitudes to fire resistance will be tolerated in any future buildings.
Crash a fuel laden heavy jet into any occupied UK office building in a way that destroys the pipes for the sprinkler system and the fire would also spread quickly.
If Allan is referring to the spread after the jet fuel had burned off its a valid point. Obviously no one ever designs a building with the idea that several thousand gallons of acellerant would be distributed over several floors and ignited in the space of 1 second. Not much one can do to keep fire from spreading quickly when a large volume of acellerant is used.
However it then spread to floors not involved in the initial impact and the fire insulation was significantly abraded by the impact on the impact floors.
I forget now just how the fire codes differed. I do recall that Dr. Quintere had issues with the NIST report's dealings with this aspect. IIRC his beef was mostly that he thought it was not dealt with deeply enough and if there were 'sweetheart' deals made that affected safety he wanted names named.
In the new WTC 7 IIRC the sprinkler pipes are protected by concrete walls, in the towers they were protected by gyproc walls.