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FIRE SERVICE AND GENERAL FIRE SAFETY TOPICS => General Interest => Topic started by: AnthonyB on March 11, 2011, 12:36:26 PM

Title: BBC Radio 4 - Woolworths fire documentary w/eye witnesses - 4 days to listen
Post by: AnthonyB on March 11, 2011, 12:36:26 PM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z5hr0#synopsis

Worth a listen - only on iPlayer for 4 more days.

Title: Re: BBC Radio 4 - Woolworths fire documentary w/eye witnesses - 4 days to listen
Post by: John Webb on March 11, 2011, 08:31:38 PM

Thanks for flagging that up, Anthony. As you said it was worth a listen; shame they didn't get anyone from Fire Research to add their comments.

Besides the 1988 furniture regs, it provided me with some years of work looking at the use of sprinklers in such situations.

Title: Re: BBC Radio 4 - Woolworths fire documentary w/eye witnesses - 4 days to listen
Post by: kurnal on March 11, 2011, 09:04:08 PM

John thanks for the insight.
I am currently interested in the work done by the BRE into the effectivenes of sprinklers in shops, particularly in respect of shops that sell clothes. I have a tatty partial copy of a report that was carried out into sports clothes and showed that in the test rig the sprinklers operated at 280 seconds when the heat release was 1000kW and the fire reached a peak heat release of 1500kW before declining. I am keen to find the complete document to compare it with others that show a much greater heat release- do you think you could point me in the right direction please?

Title: Re: BBC Radio 4 - Woolworths fire documentary w/eye witnesses - 4 days to listen
Post by: AnthonyB on March 11, 2011, 10:30:52 PM

I only knew about it because the producer contacted me for some help in tracking contemporary reports 7 some background.

It's a shame it's not downloadable.

Title: Re: BBC Radio 4 - Woolworths fire documentary w/eye witnesses - 4 days to listen
Post by: John Webb on March 12, 2011, 10:26:05 AM

Alan - can you PM me with details of the report? I might be able to track something down, particularly as I'll be at BRE next week.

Title: Re: BBC Radio 4 - Woolworths fire documentary w/eye witnesses - 4 days to listen
Post by: wee brian on March 14, 2011, 09:15:54 AM

Kurnal

BRE did some more recent stuff called "design fires" or something like that. They recreated a number of fire scenarios under a sprinklered calorimeter. It produced lots of data if thats what you want. One of the scenarios was a "sport shop" filled with nylon jumpers etc.

Title: Re: BBC Radio 4 - Woolworths fire documentary w/eye witnesses - 4 days to listen
Post by: kurnal on March 15, 2011, 01:31:20 PM

Thanks Wee B and John. I have ordered a copy of the latest edition of the book- "Design Fires for Fire Engineering", new edition to be published in April.

Title: Re: BBC Radio 4 - Woolworths fire documentary w/eye witnesses - 4 days to listen
Post by: John Webb on March 15, 2011, 04:21:45 PM

That, I think, includes the work I did on shops and the like before retiring besides things they did after I left. I'll try and get a look at it on Thursday when I'm revisiting BRE.