When inspecting, look up!

A fire occurred within my jurisdiction several years ago that changed the way I inspect and investigate. I will touch on exactly how later in the article but needless to say, I do not fail now to "look up" when I perform those necessary functions of inspecting and investigating.

This particular call came in about mid-morning on a weekday when everyone was at work and just trying to make it through another normal day. But our day was about to be anything but normal. The call was one of those dispatch's that you hope will never hear, "smoke reported coming from the roof of a daycare center!"None of us want to deal with the potential disaster that might have been awaiting us when the first truck arrived and the officer reported that there was a "single story daycare with heavy smoke coming from the roof and soffit vents". I was sure that the daycare was full of children as I had recently inspected it and as one of our city's newest facilities, it had no vacancies. The fear was overwhelming as I made my way to the fire.The bottom line was that upon arriving, indeed the attic was fully involved but the children were all out. Eventually we discover that there was one child burned as he ran past the back door as the attic access door vented downward and blew the back door open.

He suffered all degrees of burns but eventually healed completely. But it was now obvious that we had a high profile fire on our hands and potentially a law suit, so everything was magnified.The fire was extinguished quickly with only moderate damage to the area below the ceiling and that was mainly water damage. But the attic space was severe and I could tell that finding the cause was going to be a necessity in this case and not a luxury.To make a long story short(er), I eventually determined that the cause of the fire was an overheated motor in a vent in a common bathroom between two classrooms and against an outside wall. This proved pivotal in establishing the fire growth. Because of the very nature of the occupancy (100+ children running around all day) and because their bathroom vents ran from 6 a.m. in the morning until at least 6 p.m. in the evening, the vents quickly became a hazard.

200 little feet stomping around on new carpet, putting large quantities of carpet lint into the air only to be drafted up and into the venting quickly made the vent a wad of potential tender. As the lint covered motor heated up in this case, with no ventilation to cool it down, the lint became a path for the now glowing fire to make its way to the combustible roof that was less than an inch away from one side of the vent.To make matters worse, the underside of the roof structure had been insulated with a spray on type foam. This foam was also less than an inch from one side of the vent. To take the situation a degree downward from even there, the installers of the foam had sealed all of the vents into the attic to keep from covering the openings with the foam and had forgotten to remove the covers so realistically, the attic area was now sealed up tight. And even worse, for the spray-on insulation to be installed legally, it would have had to have a fire resistive barrier installed between it and the attic area per code, but that barrier was not there.

In addition, the installer did not have a permit so the installation had not been inspected or the lack of a barrier might have been discovered as well as seeing that the vents were blocked and needing to be opened back up.So, to summarize, a dirty vent had not been noticed when the occupancy had been inspected a few weeks before, the angle of the roof put the combustible roof and insulation less than an inch away from the vent, the insulation didn't have the proper fire retardant barrier applied and the covered venting system didn't allow the smoke to find it's way out therefore allowing the heat to build up while hiding the fact that there was a fire.There are many different lessons to be learned in all of this but the main thing for me was to "LOOK UP"! Had I noticed the dirty vent in the first place, then the motor would not have had the path for the heat to travel.Incidentally, another concern was that the vent was a standard domestic bathroom vent. These vents, according to the manufacturer, are not designed to run consistently. They are made to be turned on and off.

If a vent is to be used on a continuous basis, then they need a commercial venting system. I see vents all the time, especially in restaurants, that run constantly and those vents need to be commercial.After this occurred, I swept the city looking for any other signs of overheated venting. In the next few weeks, we found 2 vents that were actually smoldering, 4 more that were extremely hot and many more that were just plain dirty. These vents were in restaurants, service stations and most frightening of all, nursing homes.As investigators, our job is to find the origin and cause of all fires if possible. This is one of those places that you need to consider at a fire scene if the fire was determined to be a high origin. And for those of us who are both the inspector and the investigator, we need to make sure that the occupancy and venting system match, domestic with domestic and commercial with commercial.I really don't enjoy displaying my mistakes for the whole world to see but in this case I have no choice. Most of you probably do this correctly in the first place so this is old news, but for you who have not been looking for these things, here is your warning. Please take the time to LOOK UP and see what lurks overhead.Kurt HarrisFire Marshal

City of Weatherford