Columns

The challenge recent tragedies presents NFPA
NFPA Journal®, May/June 2003

James Shannon

James M. Shannon
NFPA President

For more than 100 years, NFPA has worked to make the world safe from fire and those efforts, along with those of the fire service and the enforcement community, have contributed to great advances in protecting lives and preserving property. In the last 25 years alone, the rate of deaths in structural fires has decreased by 50 percent.

However, incidents still occur that abruptly remind us how much there is yet to do. In the space of two weeks last winter, three tragic events in Chicago; West Warwick, Rhode Island; and Hartford, Connecticut, resulted in horrific loss of life.

In Chicago, security guards tried to break up a fight in a crowded nightclub using pepper spray. The ensuing crowd crush blocked the one available stairway, killing 21 people. In West Warwick, the same week, a pyrotechnics display set off by a rock band's helper ignited foam improperly used to soundproof the walls of a nightclub. The fire that followed killed 99 people and injured 190 others, many of them seriously. And in Hartford, less than a week later, a fire in a 150-bed nursing home killed 14 patients.

These three incidents wouldn't have occurred if basic rules of safety and common sense had been followed. While the fire investigations are still underway, it's already clear that each tragedy demonstrated failure to follow practices specifically called for in NFPA codes, including NFPA 101®, Life Safety Code®. The system that's supposed to protect safety broke down in each incident with tragic consequences.

All those concerned with life safety must examine these tragedies carefully. For the industries involved, the enforcement community, and the code-writing organizations, the appropriate question to ask is: "What can we learn from these events, and how can those lessons help us prevent this from ever happening again?"

Experience has shown that the lessons incidents like these teach often lead to advances in safety. The classic case is the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston in 1942, where 492 lives were lost. That fire led to a major re-vamp of codes and enforcement in the United States that saved an inestimable number of lives in subsequent years.

NFPA responded immediately to the incidents in Chicago, West Warwick, and Hartford, sending investigators to Connecticut and Rhode Island. Right after the West Warwick disaster, we called an emergency meeting of our Technical Committee on Assembly Occupancies to consider both it and the Chicago incident, inviting public comment. The committee has already proposed code changes.

However, it isn't just the codes that must be reviewed. Codes will only work if they're part of a system of safety that includes educated and responsible owners and skilled, aggressive enforcers. We have to do all we can to shore up the whole system that keeps people safe.

Our greatest challenge might be to fight the inevitable sense of complacency that comes with all of the progress that has been made. After the fire in West Warwick, a long-time and highly respected fire protection professional said to me, "I didn't think I'd see another fire with this kind of loss of life in this country in my career."

These three tragedies, in such a short time, humble all of us. Our goal is still no deaths like this again, but we have a lot of work to do to get there.

James M. Shannon
President, NFPA

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