Fires in Other States Spurred Enactment of Sprinkler Laws

If Los Angeles adopts retroactive fire sprinkler laws in the wake of Wednesday night’s damaging fire at the First Interstate Bank building, it will join a number of other cities, including New York and Boston, that have come under new laws following similar infernos, according to national fire safety experts.

In New York, two destructive fires claimed five lives in 1970. The first erupted at a 47-story tower on 3rd Avenue, killing three people, and the second occurred four months later at One New York Plaza, according to John Hall, director of fire analysis for the National Fire Protection Assn. in Boston.

By 1973, New York City responded by adopting a fire sprinkler law for all existing and newly constructed buildings more than 100 feet tall. The law required fire sprinkler systems or other fire-containment measures that were so costly that most building owners have simply installed the sprinklers, John A. Viniello, president of the National Fire Sprinkler Assn., a New York-based trade group, said Friday.

Similarly, the state of Massachusetts followed a damaging fire at Boston’s Prudential Center office tower by overhauling the state’s sprinkler laws in 1986, Viniello said. Until that time, only high-rises built since 1975 required sprinklers, he said. The new law required them in all buildings of 70 feet or more.

“You can see a pattern: You have a fire and people react,” Viniello said.

L.A. Weighing Ordinance

After Wednesday’s fire, the Los Angeles City Council is weighing an ordinance that would require all buildings taller than 75 feet to install sprinklers. Under a 1974 law, buildings constructed before 1974 are not required to have sprinklers.

The same scenario has held in other cities and states, including Nevada, which required sprinklers in all high-rise hotels after the MGM Grand Hotel fire in 1980, which killed 85 people in the 26-story building. Nevada’s law is now considered one of the toughest in the nation.

Although virtually every state requires fire sprinklers in buildings of one kind or another, more and more are adopting retroactive laws because of concerns over liability and because of publicity over major fires, industry officials agreed. In addition, newer buildings and their furnishings pose special fire hazards, experts said.

Legislation also is pending in Connecticut, Florida, Missouri and the city of Baltimore, Viniello said. Chicago has considered a law but so far it has been successfully opposed by building-owner interests, he said. The Building Owners and Managers Assn. International, which has fought such laws, issued statements Friday saying that not a single serious office building fire was reported last year in a survey of 1,524 such structures.

“In fact, fewer than 4% of the office buildings in North America experienced any sort of fire in 1987,” said Noel Leary, the organization’s executive vice president.

Puerto Rico Fire

Nevertheless, some states have responded to large fires that have drawn significant media attention. In Connecticut, the proposed state law has been prompted not by a local fire but by the 1986 Dupont Plaza Hotel fire in Puerto Rico, which killed 96 people, according to the Fire Sprinkler Assn.’s Viniello. A number of Connecticut residents were at that hotel when the fire occurred, he said.

“The lawsuits involved in major fires such as the MGM and Dupont fires, and the settlements out of court, would have paid for 50 sprinkler systems,” he said.

Concern Over New Designs

Art Cote, chief engineer for the National Fire Protection Assn. in Boston, said new building designs also have contributed to concern over fires. Compared to office towers from the 1960s and before, modern structures tend to be more flammable and less “compartmented,” so that fires travel more easily from one floor to another.

“We penetrate floors with communications cabling, air-conditioning systems and mechanical systems which tend to interrupt, or defeat, the integrity of floor separations,” Cote said. “We’re also using more glass, lighter materials and more synthetic materials” that burn.

Even the content of most buildings has changed over the years. Metal furniture has given way to woods and plastics, and computers have also fueled concerns.

“With the advent of the word processor . . . we produce a lot more paper than ever before,” Cote said. “A lot of what we’re doing now with computers is generating paper.”