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Articles
"Skyscraper Group Says
'No' to Terrorism-Resistant Code", Engineering News-Record, (c) Nadine M. Post,
4/3/6
The high-rise safety committee of the National Fire Protection Association,
formed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, went back to
fundamentals at its fourth meeting by deciding that model codes should not
include specific requirements for terrorism resistance. The advisory group also
will suggest to NFPA that its building and life safety codes state that they do
not address attacks, and that the codes offer guidance to designers interested
in providing terrorism resistance in buildings.
“We will take this to the NFPA committees with an official recommendation,”
said James R. Quiter, a principal fire protection engineer of Arup, San
Francisco, at a meeting in Tampa, March 22-23, of the model code developer’s
11-member High-Rise Building Safety Ad-visory Committee. Quiter chairs the
group, created in 2004 to address skyscraper safety issues, including public
education.
Of the 10 members at the meeting, there was one dissenter on the issue. “It
is unconscionable to take the simplistic position of not including terrorism” in
codes, said Jake Pauls, a building safety consultant from Silver Spring, Md.,
representing the American Public Health Association. “We can address terrorism
resistance the way we address slip resistance,” with requirements that are
imperfect but better than nothing, he added.
Jon D. Magnusson, representing the National Council of Structural Engineers
Associations and chairman of Magnusson Klemencic Associates, Seattle, strongly
disagreed. “Promising terrorism resistance while only considering the smallest
of attacks is false advertising,” he said.
Several in the group support safety retrofit requirements and an “all-hazard”
approach to improve a building’s response to extreme events, but they did not
provide substantiating data. This was troubling to some. “We need to make
proposals we can back up with support, cost-benefit or need rather than things
that seem like good ideas,” said Quiter.
Instead of proposing specific code changes, the group is suggesting NFPA
technical committees consider a host of items. These include thresholds for
requirements based on high-rise height, emergency egress elevators, wider
stairwells and redundant fire-alarm systems.
Quiter was concerned, though, that taken separately, the suggestions look
like “knee-jerk” reactions. “The combination of features will be what does or
does not provide” needed safety, he said.
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