“There is a serious communication gap between the private sector and the fire service,” said Curtis Massey, president of Massey Enterprises Inc.
Curtis Massey is a former fire officer with 20 years of firefighting experience. Today he is president of Massey Enterprises Inc., the leading disaster planning firm in North America. Massey’s disaster plans, designed to minimize loss of life and property during fires, explosions, earthquakes and so on, are in place in 65 cities in the United States and Canada. His client list includes some of the largest property owners and managers in the country, among them CB Richard Ellis Services Inc., Cushman & Wakefield Inc., The Durst Organization., TIAA.CREF, Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., Lend Lease Real Estate Investments Inc., Insignia/ESG Inc., The Shorenstein Co., Brookfield Properties Corp. and Vornado Realty Trust.
After first learning of Telco hotels through a series of articles that ran in COMMERCIAL PROPERTY NEWS in January, Massey questioned the safety of such facilities and contacted fire departments and Telco hotel owners in every major city in the United States. He has since toured a number of facilities in each region of the country. These tours confirmed his fear that the buildings pose serious risks to the lives of fire fighters and Telco employees in the event of a fire. Senior editor Dan Friedman recently interviewed Massey about what he has learned.
Q: What are the potential fire hazards in Telco hotels?
A: First, there is the problem of the sprinkler systems combined with the fact that in most Telco hotels there is no way to effectively cut off power in the event of a fire. The sprinkler system will discharge a great amount of water and more often than not put the fire out, but in a Telco facility the water will hit the frames of the energized equipment and, of course, metal conducts electricity through water. So the water will be energized on the floor when the firefighters enter that area and they may be electrocuted.
Q: Are there alternatives to “wet” fire sprinklers?
A: Most Telco tenants are putting in dry pipe pre-action systems, which means there’s no water in the sprinkler piping until the alarm goes off and then the water floods the sprinkler piping. It doesn’t come out of the head until the head actually fuses from the heat of the fire, offering a brief opportunity for the use of a hand-held fire extinguisher to knock the fire down before the sprinklers activate. Telco tenants are installing suppression agents such as FM200. This is a gas that discharges from dedicated special nozzles. It floods the entire area, essentially reducing the oxygen level to below that which will support combustion. If this fails to extinguish the fire, the sprinklers would then activate. However, in the cases I’ve seen, these pre-action systems are being installed to protect specific tenancy areas and they require their own individual cut-off valve, which is almost never in the stairwell. They’re located in the tenant space. So you’d have to go to that particular space to cut off the sprinkler water and you’d probably have to walk through energized water to reach the valve. The only other option is to drain the standpipe risers, which would be time consuming and very costly.
Q: Why can’t the energy be turned off?
A: These Telco hotels have high energy needs. I’m talking about occupancies that demand 10 to 15 times the energy of a typical office building. Their primary power is usually fed from two or more feeds from the city. However, the tenants also need redundant power; they need to keep their equipment going even in the case of an energy shortage or blackout. So they also have DC power from banks of batteries in battery rooms, and also emergency generators. Each tenant has at least three separate power sources. In order to get into the building to put out the fire, the fire department has to guarantee that all three of those sources are isolated, but no one I’ve talked to can guarantee that that can take place. In some instances, I’ve been told automatic shunts will cut off AC power to the area that’s on fire, but no one can say with certainty that the DC power can be isolated. In fact, what I’ve ascertained in every Telco hotel I’ve visited is that when the AC power is cut off it will just switch over to DC power and the equipment will stay energized.
One facility I visited had on the wall right next to the stairwell where the firefighters would enter a clear plastic housing over a big red button. Above the red button was a sign that said, “Emergency Power Cut Off.” As a firefighter, I would look at that thing and think, “Okay, this cuts off all electricity to this area. If I push it, I should be able to safely fight the fire.” But upon investigation, it turned out that that big red button only cut AC power to the equipment. When asked what would happen if the button was pushed, I was told that it would automatically transfer to DC power and continue to keep the equipment energized even during a fire. It would be very misleading to the fire department. They would take for granted that it would cut power to the area, when in fact, it would not.
Q: Do the battery rooms and generators pose any potential hazard in a fire?
A: The battery rooms are just rows and rows and rows of racks full of batteries. With any battery room, in a fire you may also have explosive hydrogen gas and sulfuric acid to contend with. Also there are racks of servers, switches and other equipment that fill these facilities. In non-raised floor areas, there will be over-head racks filled with wires that serve this equipment. In a fire, they could easily collapse onto firefighters, wrapping them up like a spider’s web.
In many of the renovated buildings that have been changed into Telco hotels, they’re putting the generators and fuel tanks up on the roof. As a firefighter, the first question that jumps out to me is: “Are they re-enforcing the roof assembly to handle the additional dead load of these generators?” In one case I saw out West, they re-enforced the new generator farm and cooling towers on the roof with an unprotected steel I-beam. Unprotected means there’s no spray-on fire proofing. If it’s unprotected, that steel can fail at 1,100 degrees in as little as five minutes. If that steel beam buckles, all the dead load of the generators on the roof crash through and you’ll have a pancake collapse, in which one floor will crash into the next, resulting in a catastrophic structural failure of the entire building. That would be the worst case scenario, but it’s a very real threat.
Q: Are the fuel tanks that would feed the generators also a threat?
A: I’ve found fuel tanks adjacent to the building, on the roof and in some cases I was told they have even attempted to put the fuel tanks in high-rise buildings on the tenant floor. If you put, say, 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel into a high-rise building, that’s a significant hazard in the event of a fire, a natural gas explosion, or an earthquake. If anything splits that fuel tank, you’ll have 10,000 gallons of diesel running through the core of the building.
Q: What about all the wires, what would happen to them in a fire?
A: The cable trays that run overhead are a big problem because if they came down on a firefighter in heavy smoke conditions, not only would it entangle him. but it would inhibit his ability to make emergency egress. Even if he had a rescue line wrapped around his waist he might confuse the rescue line and a cable and follow the wrong line and wind up in a bad spot. That’s aside from the prospect of high-voltage wiring coming dlown.
An additional concern is the fact that much of the wiring is coated with PVC (polyvinyl chloride) insulation. Some of it is coated with Teflon, which is safer, but the majority of it isn’t in most cities. PVC not only burns, it gives off very toxic gases. The two main gases given off in any fire are carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is a highly explosive flammable gas. If it’s in an area that can’t be ventilated and you have a heavy smoke condition, there’s a distinct possibility of carbon monoxide explosion. The smoke in the area actually ignites and explodes with enough force to blow out the floor and possibly even destabilize the building. It’s like a natural gas explosion. There are other, slower acting dangers associated with PVC wire when it burns such as the production of vinyl chloride and hydrogen cyanide gases. The infamous New York Telephone Exchange fire back in the ’60s is a good case in point. From what I’ve been able to gather from talking to the fire department there, almost every firefighter who was involved in that fire has died or is dying of cancer due to the PVC wiring that burned in that fire. Those same carcinogens would be released by fire in most of today’s Telco hotels.
Q: Telco tenants need to keep their equipment moisture-free, so the buildings that house them are windowless or have sealed windows. How does that affect the safety of the building?
A: None of the Telco hotels I’ve seen have smoke removal capabilities. A building has to be ventilated during a fire. The smoke will not just go away on its own. If the mechanical capabilities for removing smoke are not present in a building, then the firefighters will typically attempt to ventilate through windows. The problem with windowless Telco hotels is that there is no way to achieve horizontal ventilation short of breaching a wall, which is a last resort. The only other option is to ventilate through stairwells. But if you have a high-rise building that’s been converted to Telco use, the smoke will not just go up and out the roof of the 10th or 15th floor because when you’re applying water to the fire, either via the sprinklers or fire department hose lines, you’re wetting the smoke down. It becomes a very dense, heavy, less buoyant smoke and it sinks. The ventilation options in Telco hotels are extremely limited.
Q: Do the massive air conditioning systems used to cool the Telco equipment raise any concerns in the event of a fire?
A: Some of the units I’ve seen have Freon lines running right into the air conditioning units in the tenant space, right on the floors. If the Freon line were to rupture that would be another hazard. Many of the refrigerants give off gases like phosgene, which is the same nerve agent that was used in World War I. It’s the main ingredient in mustard gas. Others have safer, sealed glycol-type units.
Q: Are there any other potential dangers we have not yet discussed?
A: I spoke with a fire chief who said they had done a minor training session at a Telco hotel, not knowing that it was a Telco facility. He thought it was a refurbished office building. He found that his radios would not work once they went through the front door of the building. In that case the owner is installing an internal repeater system to aid the firefighters, which exceeds code. Many owners may not put out that much effort or expense.
Q: Why won’t the radios work?
A: We’re not sure yet. It has to be either the massive amount of steel and concrete inhibiting their communication, or quite possibly the amount of energy given off by the equipment interfering with their frequencies. If the fire department does, indeed, have a problem communicating within these facilities, that’s a very serious handicap. Without radios, you have no unified command. They will not allow that to happen. When they can’t communicate with their units, they will withdraw whether the fire is out or not.
Q: How well informed are fire departments about these facilities?
A: Every major city fire department I talked to across the U.S., with the exception of Atlanta, did not know that these buildings even existed. When I say fire department, I’m referring to the fire suppression division, not the fire prevention division. The prevention divisions, the guys who come in and perform code inspections, they seem to be aware of these occupancies, but I’m not sure they really understand what they’re looking at. They’re treating it as a telephone switching station or a data center, but it’s a different breed. In a Telco hotel there are lots of different tenants and the tenants have a lot of leeway; for the most part, they’re all doing their own thing. In any event, the prevention guys are clearly not communicating the existence of these facilities and the inherent dangers of these occupancies to the field personnel, to the suppression division.
Q: How has this happened?
A: There is a serious communication gap between the private sector and the fire service. The people who own and manage these buildings take for granted that the fire department knows their building inside and out, but that’s not the case. They know how to handle emergencies in general, but understanding the building is another thing altogether. When I’ve informed the fire chiefs of the dangers involved in these facilities, they’ve made it clear to me that in the event of fire in a Telco hotel, they would have no qualms about pulling their people out and letting it burn.
Q: How have Telco owners responded when informed them of the dangers?
A: Some, such as Taconic Investment Partners L.L.C., Nodecom Inc. and Insignia/ESG Management Co., have been very concerned and responsive, and are eager to work to make their facilities safer. Some others, which I won’t name, made it clear that they didn’t want these issues in print. Clearly, they didn’t want me to go out of my way to advise the local fire departments that these buildings exist. I think their mindset is they fear that if we educate the fire department, the codes—which have clearly not caught up with the industry—will be revised to apply to Telco facilities. To hide these buildings from the fire service is a completely backward objective. What firefighters don’t know can and will kill them. Secondly, if you just look at it from a real estate perspective, the dollars and cents aspect, the losses that would be incurred from a fire in one of these facilities could be staggering — not only to the building owner, but to the whole city or region in which business has become increasingly dependent on the Internet.
Q: The big question is, what can be done to minimize the danger?
A: First and foremost, we have to educate the fire departments. They need to gain a familiarization with these facilities by walkthroughs. But that would only be moderately effective because they’re shown so much and a lot of this technical stuff isn’t going to sink in, especially if you have 10 to 20 Telco tenants in a given building. Emergency pre-plans have to be developed for these buildings. The fire department needs to have something they can refer to quickly that can show them the graphics of the building and a brief written text explaining how to get around in it, how to cut things off, how to interface with the systems. It is paramount that they have a clear-cut understanding as to what their capabilities and limitations are.
Q: What specific changes in the infrastructure of these buildings would you recommend?
A: There needs to be clearer labeling of all the equipment, the utilities, everything….Firefighters have to find a way to quickly cut both AC and DC power to the equipment in the event of a fire. What’s needed is automatic shut downs of the power – primary and back-up. At the same time, they have to put in place a first line of defense, such as a suppression agent that would work in the place of water. Also very importantly, there must be a capability to remove smoke from the building. Finally, we need to find a way for fire department communications to take place in Telco hotels in the event of a fire. Without communication and coordination of interior crews, there will most likely be no fire attack.