BY FRANCIS L. BRANNIGAN,SFPE (FELLOW)
 |
▲ This old main girder (a girder is a beam supporting other beams and is not necessarily made of steel) has been patched up in several different ways. The round escutcheon plate at the middle of the bottom of the picture has a protruding metal rod and nut. This means that there is a rod (circle) picking up the load of this girder and carrying it up to a beam somewhere above (probably in the cockloft) that extends from wall to wall. The beam could be solid material or of truss construction and made of wood or steel. A cockloft fire could cause a first-floor collapse. (See BCFS3, 68.)
 |
▲ This is a plain sawn wood column. When used in 19th-century churches, they were sometimes built up into a cylindrical shape using specially milled wood strips. Canvas was then glued around the wood and painted to resemble marble by a professional “marble painter.” This “marble” will fail in a fire.
 |
▲ Four boards are joined together and finished to look like a solid beam. Determine how the false beams are attached overhead. It is most likely that there would be minimal resistance to fire-caused collapse.
 |
▲ Although these are real wood beams, the ceiling panels are made of plain, uninhibited polystyrene, like coffee cups. There is a two-foot void between the ceiling panels and the concrete floor above through which fire could roar down over the guest rooms. Although this building was of concrete construction and probably rated “fire resistive,” the ceiling arrangement could cause a terrible disaster. Don’t blindly accept rated fire resistive buildings as a minor problem. Years ago, at a Pentagon construction site, a temporary light bulb heated the low-density fiberboard (celotex) ceiling to ignition. The resultant fire collapsed the Pentagon concourse.
At the “fire resistive” John Sevier Center, Johnson City, Tennessee, 16 people died from a 1989 fire in the combustible ceiling tile, which was hidden above a new flame-spread-rated ceiling. No code specifically forbids this dangerous practice. If you see it happening and the owner refuses to remove the old tile, notify the owner in writing that you will use a big line, a ton of water a minute, to blow the new ceiling down to be able to wet the tile; this make a flashover less likely. (See BCFS3, 389.)
 |
▲ This pile of lumber was used to create an old fashioned pub in a fire-resistive concrete airport. The sprinklers will not hit fire in the voids created behind this paneling and inside the false hollow beams. Determine how the beams are suspended; undoubtedly, they would fail early in a fire. (See BCFS3, 363-364.)
 |
▲ Plastic imita-tions of wood are common. This cabinet, for example, is actually made of plastic.
