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Regenhard Calls for New High-Rise Codes and Code Group Composition
Fire Engineering Magazine (April 2002)
FDIC Conference: Indianapolis, IN March 2002
"We need national reform of code groups. Right now, code
groups are made up of builders, developers, financial people, and
bureaucrats," says Sally Regenhard, who lost her 28-year-old son,
Christian Regenhard, in the World Trade Center (WTC) collapse and is the
founder and head of The Skyscraper Safety Campaign. Regenhard explains
that there is "hardly any representation from the fire service." She would
like to see every code group composed of at least 50 percent of members
from the fire service and the academic world of fire science engineering.
To this end, she has appealed to the members of the fire service to
contact their legislators to ask them for reform of code groups and the
codes themselves.
Regenhard says the World Trade Center never should have
collapsed, despite those who say the collapse was inevitable. She bases
her position on what she has learned during the past eight months from
people in the fire science, fire engineering, and fire service communities
and from experts in the collapse of burning buildings. She mentions
specifically Fire Department of New York (FDNY) retired Deputy Chief
Vincent Dunn.
Dunn, Regenhard points out, wrote an article in Fire
Engineering magazine in 1995 in which he said that firefighters with hoses
and nozzles cannot defend fires in high-rise buildings because such
operations are effective only for areas up to 2,500 square feet.
Each floor in the WTC was one acre, Regenhard says. Dunn
was prophetic when he wrote in 1995 that FDNY would encounter a very
serious fire in a high-rise building in the near future and that the
people above the fire would not be able to get out, according to
Regenhard. Dunn, she added, said the people above the fire would be
throwing out notes from the window and jumping out of the upper
floors.
Some people may be acting as if they don't know it,
Regenhard relates, but, she explains, everybody in the fire service knew
of the problems of skyscrapers, high-rises and the fact that radios don't
work in high-rise buildings. "This is not about a radio being defective,"
she interjects. " It's about the nature of fire service communications in
a high-rise building." The WTC and all high-rise buildings that are
constructed should be "overbuilt," to protect the fire service, she
noted-a term she defined as having more fire safety features than
necessary. She adds that Dunn said the Empire State Building would not
have collapsed if hit by the plane because it was overbuilt and had
classic column and beam construction and concrete masonry.
All the Systems Have Failed the Fire
Service
The system they swore to uphold betrayed the 343 FDNY
firefighters killed at the WTC, Regenhard says. She deems it an outrage
that this system allows the same standards to be applied to a 110-story
building and a 10-story building. This same system, she adds," allows
builders and developers to build buildings like this and walk away and
leave it up to the fire service to figure out how to defend them and
allows buildings of any size, of any height, and of any square footage of
open floor space to be constructed." All of the systems failed the fire
service, she stresses.
We Need National Code Reform
Regenhard is urging fire service members to contact their senators,
congressman, governor-"anyone who will listen"-and ask them to support a
federal investigation of the WTC collapse, code reform, and code group
reform and to outlaw lightweight open floor truss construction. She
reminds the fire service that it has been saying for years: "Never trust
the truss." She says, "Well, that certainly hit home on 9-11. The entire
construction of the WTC was steel open floor truss. Bolts connecting the
truss to the outside walls were less than one inch in diameter.
Also, Regenhard urges the fire service to petition
legislators to put an end to an Authority's constructing buildings without
building codes. The WTC, she says, "was constructed without having to
comply with a single city or state code or fire department
regulation."
The fire service, she says, can make a difference and
effect change. Firefighter and civilian safety should be put first. The
fire service has the power to bring about "legislation of safety," she
insists.
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© Copyright 2002 Fire Engineering Magazine
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