“It won’t be a fire that incites the panic,” says Steven Sapp about the next nightclub or concert disaster. “It will be something else, like in Chicago.”

Sapp, a battalion chief with the Columbia, Missouri, Fire Department Fire Marshal’s office, was referring to the crowd crush at the E2 club in Chicago last February, which began when a security guard doused party-goers with pepper spray to break up a fight. Fleeing occupants rushed the main exit, crushing 21 people to death.

Crowd crush also played a key role in the deaths of 99 people at The Station in West Warwick, Rhode Island, a few days later. However, overcrowding wasn’t the only factor contributing to the fire deaths. A highly flammable interior finish and the improper use of pyrotechnics also played a pivotal role.

Unfortunately, the combination of such factors is unique to The Station. At one Columbia establishment, Sapp says, the department’s inspector counted 500 people in a building certified for 244—and found that the building’s second exit was blocked. According to Division Chief Richard Barr with Lawrence-Douglas County, Kansas, Fire and Medical, other typical violations are inoperative emergency lighting and exit signs.

The fact that violations of adopted building and fire codes occur in every community in the United States, not just West Warwick and Chicago where the E2 club didn’t provide enough exits, underscores the importance of fire department inspections, which have taken on a new urgency in North America.

Following the fire in Rhode Island, for example, the Lawrence fire department began to focus more closely on evaluating acoustic-dampening material in assembly occupancies. Lawrence is home to the University of Kansas and, like many college communities, has many bars and clubs that cater to the students.

“We found one that had egg-crate foam,” says Barr. “It was fire-retardant when the owner purchased it. However, when we did the flame test, it failed, so they’re pulling it out. It was in a sprinklered occupancy, fortunately.”

Fraternity and sorority houses in Lawrence must be equipped with automatic sprinkler systems, as must assembly occupancies over 5,000 square feet (465 square meters) built since 1993. The city has been successful in getting other occupancies, such as senior citizen housing, to sprinkler their buildings voluntarily. Not all venues are so accommodating, however.

“Some design their buildings at 4,996 square feet (464 square meters) so they don’t have to be sprinklered,” says Barr.

What’s being inspected?

The Columbia fire department has always focused on inspections in assembly occupancies, says Sapp. Like Lawrence, Columbia is a college town, home of the University of Missouri, so it, too, has a number of bars and restaurants.

“We team with the Columbia Police Department’s Community Action Team, which typically handles what are seen as community issues,” says Sapp. “We use their security to assist our fire marshals to make sure the inspector is safe. When the decision has to be made that they are over occupancy limits and have to remove people, we rely upon police to maintain security and orderliness.”

Working with the police department’s action team has additional benefits.

“The Community Action Team knows where a lot of the problem areas are, and this allows them to concentrate in particular areas,” says Sapp. The fire department has trained the police officers as to what constitutes a danger that must be addressed quickly.

“This way they aren’t wasting time on non-issues,” Sapp says.

“Annually, we do 2,000 inspections,” he adds. “We do everything except single-family homes or duplexes.” This constitutes 4,600 buildings that must be inspected.

The Columbia fire department’s assembly occupancy inspections aren’t the result of the tragedy in Rhode Island.

“This hasn’t been a knee-jerk reaction,” says Sapp. “We’ve been doing this for a while, working with the community policing team to put on seminars for building owners.” During these seminars, the fire department addresses fire code issues and the police department covers security and policing issues.

In Austin, Texas, an inspector visits public assembly venues between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. at least four times a year. In addition, the fire department visits each facility up to six times in 12 months.

“We’ve developed a culture in Austin,” says Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Baum. “The bartenders know what are ‘show-stoppers.’ Gross overcrowding, blocked, or locked exits. Fifty people over occupancy is an instant violation. If they’re grossly over, it’s a shutdown. We have to only do a few of these to send the message. They know we’re going to be out there and uncompromising.”

Training and certification

Certification and training of inspectors are essential when it comes to a strong inspections department. For example, the state fire marshal’s office certifies all five of the Columbia Fire Department’s inspectors.

“Currently, there’s a 40-hour certification class that all fire marshal inspectors must complete,” says Sapp. “It’s a three-year certification, and you must maintain your proficiency by obtaining 32 hours of continuing education credits over three years and conducting a certain number of inspections.”

To help the inspectors maintain their skills, the department holds monthly classes devoted to the fire codes.

According to Rick Fraser, who’s with the Cape Breton Regional Fire Service, Nova Scotia, Canada, his department has recently embarked on a new and ambitious training and certification program, too.

“The inspectors will be certified NFPA inspectors,” says Fraser. “We’re in a training agreement with the provincial office of the fire marshal and the Fire Inspectors Association of Nova Scotia for training and certification.”

The program, which began in February 2003, includes a home-study component and four classroom sessions, which are scheduled to start in May. The first session covers the code requirements of the National Building Code of Canada and a legislature review. The second addresses large buildings, and fire and life safety requirements, while the third focuses on several NFPA codes and standards, including NFPA 10, Portable Fire Extinguishers; NFPA 13, Installation of Sprinklers; NFPA 72®, National Fire Alarm Code®; and NFPA 96, Ventilation Control and Fire Protection for Commercial Cooking Operations. The fourth class covers the National Fire Code of Canada.

“At each class, you take an exam, as well as the seven home-study modules,” says Fraser. “You must do a practicum and a minimum of seven inspections, one of them in the presence of a mentor.”

There was a strong incentive to create and implement this training program.

“A new fire service act took effect that requires all municipalities to have a full-time inspector and staff in place by September 2003,” says Fraser. This will increase the number of inspectors in the province from 30 to 80 or 90.

“Our jurisdiction is regional,” Fraser notes. “We inspect all types of properties over four-unit residential, regardless of the occupancy class.” This means that about 4,000 properties must be inspected.

Full-time inspectors in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, must also go through state-mandated training, and operations personnel have to undergo training quarterly, as well. According to Deputy Fire Chief Caprice Mellon, “before I allow a person, such as a newly promoted captain, to do inspections, he or she has to complete 40 hours of training with fire prevention personnel before doing it on his or her own.”

Inspection methodology and frequency

To help set inspection priorities, the Columbia fire department is developing a system using a risk-management system.

“We’re in the process of gathering the data to populate the database with information such as a building’s use group, age, and fire suppression and detection systems,” says Sapp.

 Once this information has been gathered, the system can be used to assign a risk level to the structure.

“The data will then allow us to prioritize what occupancies we need to be in and how often,” says Sapp. “We may be able to drop some occupancies, or we may have to accelerate the pace of inspections on others.”

In addition to helping streamline the department’s inspection process, implementing this new inspection evaluation system will support the department’s accreditation process.

The frequency of inspections in Nova Scotia is determined by legislative priorities.

“All assembly-licensed establishments with fire alarm systems are first,” says Fraser.

The provincial Alcohol and Gaming Commission issue such a license. The second priority is licensed assemblies without alarm systems and day care facilities. The third priority is unlicensed assembly buildings, followed by all other occupancies.

The inspections take place on a five-year cycle, and the occupancies inspected in the first year are those with the highest priority. In year two, those with the next-highest priority will be inspected, and so on.

“Over five years we hope to have them all inspected once,” says Fraser.

In Lawrence, Kansas, three inspectors are responsible for 3,500 properties. Like the inspectors in Columbia, they go over everything but single-family homes and duplexes, says Barr. Rather than drawing support from the police department, however, Lawrence inspectors rely on engine and medic companies to assist in the inspection program.

“The business and multi-family apartments are done by the engine companies and the medic companies,” says Barr. “The entire city is divided up into portions and assigned to a crew. The prevention staff does the licensing inspections, complaint inspections, plan reviews, and site plan reviews for developments.

“We’ve been inspecting bars since the early 1980s,” says Barr. “We have two inspectors check the bars from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.”

In Chapel Hill, about 1,500 occupancies have to be inspected.

“We do about 50 percent of them each year,” says Deputy Chief Mellon. “Overcrowding is an issue at particular times, especially during sports events.”

The department is particularly active during major events and during periods when people tend to celebrate.

“We’re in the bars a lot during Halloween,” says Mellon. “We’re probably in each bar four or five times a year.”

Given the frequency of its inspections, the violations the Chapel Hill Fire Department typically finds in most assembly occupancies are similar to those found in business occupancies.

“Exit lights, fire extinguishers, emergency lights. I haven’t seen anything that makes my eyebrows jump,” says Mellon. “Nothing related to egress.”

As a mecca for start-up bands, Austin has a “huge entertainment corridor,” says Baum, with approximately 300 places of assembly that must be inspected regularly, along with every other type of property except single-family homes.

With such a large number of properties to inspect, how does the department allocate its resources?

“We determine our inspection priorities and frequencies by risk,” says Baum, which is, in turn, determined by such factors as the frequency of fires and their consequences (see “Do Fire Inspections Work,” NFPA Journal®, November/December 2002).

“The consequences factor has dual elements of life loss and costs,” he notes. “What we discovered is that the greatest risk is in single-family homes, but we have no authority to inspect these. The next-greatest risk is multi-family homes, which we do have the authority to inspect.”

The department does this using a combination of inspectors and engine companies.

“Each company officer is assigned 70 to 80 inspections a year,” says Baum. Since each inspection requires a follow-up, each officer is conducting close to 150 inspections annually.

“The whole crew conducts the inspection, which is really important,” says Baum.

 “We learned by bitter experience that the draft stops can have a dramatic impact on fire spread,” says Baum. Over the life of the inspection program, the fire department has identified more than 300 buildings that had no draft stops. Every one of them has been fixed.

What’s the effect of this aggressive inspection program?

“Literally, before a fire is out, the fire prevention bureau’s office does a post-incident inspection and determines what impact the factors had on the spread of the fire. Then he or she researches what a company may have found during an earlier inspection. If it found a violation and it was fixed, and the correction had an impact on the fire, we let the company know that what they did made a difference,” says Baum.

Technology

In Cape Breton, inspectors are using hand-held computers to assist them.

“We had a software program developed for our use,” says Fraser. “The program conducts a risk evaluation on the property, collecting the physical data on the building, such as occupancy type and construction.”

Inspectors follow a checklist to collect the data and download it to a computer when they get back to the station. The program identifies deficiencies and calculates the water flow that would be needed to extinguish a fire in the property. Inspectors can also add digital photographs and floor plans to the database.

“We’ve had it in place for six months and are still working with it and expanding it.”

Inspectors at the New York State Fire Prevention Bureau are also taking advantage of new technology.

“We’re using the new pen tablet computers,” says Paul Martin, deputy fire chief with the Fire Prevention Bureau. “It’s doing tremendous things for us. It makes the work of the inspectors so much easier in the field. They’re creating their inspection reports as they go through the building. The inspectors all have a battery-operated printer in their vehicles so they can print out a preliminary report in the field and give it to the building manager on the spot.”

This isn’t a legal inspection report, just a field inspection report. When the inspector returns to the office, he or she uploads the report to the network, so a supervisor miles away from the field office can review the report, make any changes that might be needed, and print out the final report to be sent out. This system eliminates the need to re-enter the data from the field, reducing the amount of clerical time it takes to produce a final report. The information is also entered automatically into a database, which means it can be used for statistical analysis.

“Digital photographs can be attached to the report and maintained in the computer, as well as other related documents,” says Martin. “If the inspector has to have a long narrative, he or she can create it in a word-processing package and attach it to the inspection report.”

In Austin, with 29,000 inspections each year, an effective database system is crucial.

“The system is accessible organization-wide, and the prevention bureau can review the information,” says Baum. It also means that battalion chiefs at the scene of a building fire can now pull up an accurate plan of the structure.

Has the inspection program been successful? Baum thinks so.

“We’ve been focusing for so many years on critical components, and we wanted to know if we were making a difference,” he says. “No prevention effort can prevent ignition, but it can affect the extent (of the fire). What we learned is that the number of fires, but also the extent of the fire loss, went down.”

The bottom line: fire inspections promote fire prevention. And prevention works.