Testimony on the

U.S. Fire Administration Authorization for Fiscal Years 2000-01

Raymond G. Kammer

Director

National Institute of Standards and Technology

March 23, 1999

Chairman Smith and other members of this Subcommittee, I am pleased to testify before you today on the U.S. Fire Administration Authorization for Fiscal Years 2000-01. I will briefly review NIST's responsibilities under the Fire Prevention and Control Act (Public Law 93-498), our recent progress, and plans. By way of overview, we have made great strides, yet we still face a challenge, one that could offset much of what we've gained in the last 25 years.

The Fire Prevention and Control Act, enacted October 29, 1974, established, among other things, a fire research center within the Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The mission of this center is to perform and support research on all aspects of fire with the aim of providing scientific and technical knowledge applicable to the prevention and control of fires. The Act further stipulates that the content and priorities of the research program shall be determined in consultation with the Administrator of the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration, now known as the United States Fire Administration (USFA). In short, NIST is the Nation's leading fire research laboratory and the focal point for fire research within the national government, and the USFA has overall responsibility for national fire safety policy and programs. These are clearly distinct yet highly interrelated responsibilities.

NIST and the USFA have a working relationship and a formal agreement for coordination of priorities and programs. Specifically, USFA provides a perspective on the needs of the fire service organizations for NIST in the formulation of our research priorities and programs. Similarly, NIST works closely with USFA in the dissemination and transfer of results of our research relevant to the needs of the fire services.

It will soon be 25 years since passage of this historic legislation. The Fire Act followed on the heels of the dramatic and stirring report of the Presidential Commission on Fire Prevention and Control, "America Burning," which graphically depicted the horrors of fire and its human and material toll. Following passage of the Fire Act, we set a goal for our research efforts of 50% reduction of fire deaths. Our strategy was a two-path effort. One involved identifying the most common scenarios leading to fire death and developing intervention strategies and technologies. The other involved more fundamental research aimed at developing sufficient understanding of fire to ultimately "engineer" fire safety into materials, products, systems and facilities.

We have made good progress on both efforts. Working in partnership with other federal agencies, many private sector bodies, and the fire services, the U.S. fire death rate has indeed been reduced by very nearly 50% according to National Safety Council statistics. NFPA data reveal the number of reported fires has been reduced by 40%. Most experts credit these reductions in fire losses to advances in smoke alarms, sprinklers, more fire resistant products, and more effective fire safety education and information. NIST has been a significant contributor to every one of these developments. Specifically, the most critical set of fire scenarios turned out to involve residences, and combinations of smoking materials or small ignition sources, upholstered furniture or bedding, nighttime, and some degree of human incapacitation. NIST contributions included test methods for smoke detectors, cigarette ignition resistance of mattresses and upholstered furniture, flame spread on carpets and rugs. NIST also developed what is now a national and international standard for heat release rate measurement, the cone calorimeter which has helped guide industry to lower flammability products and materials. NIST developed computer-based models of room fire growth and smoke movement throughout buildings are now used routinely by fire protection engineers, firefighters and educators. Models and real scale fire tests developed and fostered by NIST led to quantification of the rapid rate of onset of "flashover" (or full room fire involvement) from a small household fire that is now widely used in public service announcements, and fire safety training. The results of NIST research have become the basis for new practices, standards, code provisions, new and ubiquitous technologies such as residential smoke detectors, and fire safety education materials used in schools and by the fire services around the world.

The results of NIST research on the more fundamental research path are even more significant. The research carried out by NIST, and its academic grantees supported over the years, has established firmly a body of knowledge now accepted as "fire science and engineering." Important manifestations of this development are:

· emergence of highly acclaimed textbooks and handbooks on fire science and engineering,

· establishment of fire safety engineering curricula in a growing number of colleges and universities, and the

· emergence of fire safety engineering as an accredited engineering profession.

These developments in turn are fueling a global movement to performance-based fire safety standards and codes. These investments in fire research made through the fire research center at NIST have contributed significantly to these improvements.

The implications of all this are very profound. We are on the threshold of enabling what we have for some time called, "cost-effective, assured fire safety." Let me explain it a piece at a time. "Assured fire safety" would be to fire what structural engineering is now to buildings. Everyone expects that a building that has been structurally engineered will stand. Likewise, shouldn't we come to expect that a product or building that has been fire safety engineered will not burn? Advances in our knowledge of fire, and associated technologies applicable to fire prevention and control, convince us that not only does this make sense, but also that it can be done much more "cost-effectively" than traditional fire safety practices and technologies, most of which are essentially reactive not proactive.

Importantly, this expanding knowledge base is as relevant to mall, factory, automobile, aircraft, ship, urban wild-land, post-earthquake, and terrorist-instigated fires as it is to residential fires. Cycle time reduction and the pace of commerce are both rapidly increasing in every sector of the economy. So are the complexities and interdependencies of the systems, which make up our society, as we become increasingly dependent on advanced technologies. Buildings are getting bigger and more complex. So are aircraft and ships. The value density and fire damage vulnerability of the contents of factories, offices and even homes are increasing with increasing dependence on highly sophisticated equipment and systems. Thus, for fire risk to continue to decline, fire protection technologies must become more proactive and reliable in function. Otherwise, new gaps will open, bringing new fire risks. These new risks may become manifest in loss of life, property, productive capacity or security events; in upward trends in the cost of losses; in increasing costs of protection; or combinations of all of these possibilities. For example, consider the following catastrophic events:

· a large passenger aircraft afire over the ocean,

· a cruise ship fire in a storm at sea,

· a post earthquake fire in a high density urban complex fanned by high winds,

· a failed water supply to a crowded high rise building or mega-mall,

· a national power grid or telecommunications center failure resulting from an uncontrolled fire,

· a team of fire fighters trapped in a blazing warehouse or factory fire,

· a fire in a major computer chip/component manufacturing plant leading to loss of market or even failure of a major supplier,

· a major terrorist event involving flammable fluids or burning metals,

All of these are images we hope never to see. Presumably they are highly unlikely. Most of them have not yet occurred. Yet, none of these events is impossible.

Alternatively, consider the following, more pleasant outcomes such as:

· comfortable home furnishings and bedding that pose no fire risk,

· factories and warehouses that are reliably fire safe,

· structural systems that will not collapse catastrophically in the event of a fire,

· fires that can be sensed before they become significant,

· fire fighters who can actually extinguish building fires without significant personal risk of loss of life to themselves.

Our job at NIST is to think about these sorts of things: to provide cost-effective means to assure that the bad ones don't happen and the good ones can, and to provide the knowledge and tools needed by fire protection engineers and others to make sure that better things happen.

NIST is confronting these mounting challenges with limited resources. The NIST fire research effort is unique. There are only a few centers of fire research beyond NIST and a small number of academic fire researchers. Whereas, largely as a consequence of our research successes, the number of commercial, fire safety engineering firms has dramatically increased; support for the research on which their tools, measurement methods, and databases are founded is limited.

Recently, my colleague, FEMA Director, James Lee Witt, commissioned a group of fire service leaders to conduct a Blue Ribbon Study of the United States Fire Administration. That group did an excellent job. Their report is posted on the FEMA/USFA web site. The Panel's recommendations are primarily focussed on USFA and those research issues raised by the fire services; and speak to a number of unmet research needs, NIST's role as leader of the fire research community, and cites efforts on NIST's part to team with the USFA in re-establishing a truly national effort to improve fire safety. The Panel's report also talks about the critical role of NIST and others in meeting national fire safety goals and the urgency of developing a "national fire research agenda" and roadmap. The Panel's recommendation also urges $10 million per year in additional funding for these R&D needs plus an additional $2 million for fire research grants to academic and other allied institutions.

In 1991, a preliminary study in the U.S. suggests that the total burden of fire on the Nation is in excess of $128 billion/year. This figure included estimates of the cost of fire losses, the cost of the fire services and the cost of fire protection incorporated into buildings, products, and construction. Recently, a similar study has been conducted in Canada. Careful review of these studies suggests that enhanced research leading to "cost-effective assured fire safety" could lead to a reduction of this burden by 20%. This would include, we estimate conservatively, a further reduction of at least 1000-1500 fire deaths per year from improved materials, and more reliable and cost-effective sensing and suppression technologies. Further, major reductions in the burden of fire would come from reduction of redundant, outdated, and/or functionally ineffective requirements present in many existing codes and standards. Additionally, major gains in fire fighting effectiveness are achievable as well as reductions in fire fighter risk. Similar gains would come from being able to produce products and buildings designed and built with markedly lower fire risk.

We have come a long way in reducing fire deaths and the number of fires in the United States. NIST-conducted and sponsored fire research has played a major role in this remarkable feat, and we are justifiably pleased with these results.

However, our job is far from finished. We believe the Nation needs to move toward assuring the delivery of cost-effective "assured fire safety." We believe it is critical to the future well-being of the Nation's citizens, and the future effectiveness and safety of our firefighters. We believe it is a requisite to global competitiveness of U.S. industry. We appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today and look forward to working out a strategy for addressing this unmet need with you in the near future.