Fire Safety and Technology Editorial

 

Upholstered Furniture and Fire Safery

In July 2007, I wrote an editorial about a massive fire on June 18 that killed nine firefighters at a furniture warehouse in Charleston SC. On May 22, another massive fire (pictures below) destroyed a furniture warehouse in Houston TX. Luckily no firefighters were killed this time!

There have also been several other furniture warehouse fires, all of them massive, including ones in Barre VT (October 22, 2005), Wenatchee WA (December 19, 2006), Rocky Mount NC (May 3, 2007), Klamath Falls OR (June 6, 2007), Wellington OH (November 12, 2007), Sumter SC (January 21, 2008), Jacksonville AR (July 4, 2008) and Lenoir NC (February 2, 2009).

Two years ago I said: “As usual in the case of large accidents, there will be an investigation, there will be official reports and there will be litigation. However, what happened was predictable. The reason this fire became so big is because it was being fueled by the multiple residential upholstered furniture items that were being held at the warehouse. We have known for a long time that each upholstered sofa (or each single upholstered furniture item) can generate an enormous amount of heat when it burns (typically 3 megawatts or more per individual chair) if it is not properly fire retarded. We have also known for many years that such furniture ignites very easily (usually simply with a match). Finally, we also know that the heat released from fires involving stacked items is not just the sum of the heat released by each individual item but that heat release in such scenarios increases exponentially. Thus, it is elementary to calculate that the presence of just some 200-300 single sofas would generate a fire of about 1 gigawatt, if they are placed side by side, and a much larger one if they are (at least partially) stacked. In consequence, the fact that the Charleston upholstered furniture fire became a massive tragedy was not a surprise.”

The new fire in Houston occurred in a very large furniture warehouse, in a building near the main showroom. This was a four-alarm fire, involving more than 100 firefighters, that gutted an 80,000 ft2 (7,400 m2) warehouse behind the main showroom. Fortunately, the fire did not reach the store's main showroom, which was separated by a large area between the buildings. All 100 employees and customers were able to get out without injury. However, the entire furniture inventory in the warehouse, involving millions of dollars, was burnt.

The 2009 edition of the International Fire Code now requires that all places used for the display and sale of upholstered furniture need to be sprinklered. This facility does not appear to have been sprinklered. Did that make the difference? It probably did not.

As I have said repeatedly, in the UK, after a fire occurred in 1979 at a department store in Manchester involving upholstered furniture, all furniture has been required to be manufactured so that it is safe to ignition from cigarettes and from small open flames. All polyurethane foam used in British furniture also has to meet a very severe fire test.

In the US there is still, in 2009, no federal regulation requiring that furniture be safe in case of fire. In fact there is not even regulation that the furniture be safe from ignition by cigarettes. Voluntary industry cigarette ignition standards apply to most upholstered furniture sold in the US. Some states, including California, have requirements that upholstered furniture meet California Technical Bulletin 116, which tests furniture with cigarettes. In fact, fortunately, most new US upholstered furniture will not ignite by the action of cigarettes, perhaps because of fear of product liability.

The US National Association of State Fire Marshals (NASFM) petitioned the US CPSC in 1993 that upholstered furniture fire legislation be put in place, perhaps following the British model. NASFM petitioned for federal regulation requiring that upholstered furniture be safe from ignition by cigarettes and by small open flames. CPSC has still not acted in May 2009.

Is regulation, other than the toothless proposals by CPSC (that are already about a year and a half old) ever going to happen? Perhaps we should be happy that so much unsafe furniture burnt in Houston: not so much can harm any potential future buyers!

Was this the one incident that will create an outcry for real regulation for fire safety of upholstered furniture in the US? I doubt it but I hope so.

Marcelo M. Hirschler