You’re not the only one:
I found that first clip chilling - the way several folk seemed to think the fire “entertaining.” Filming it, jumping up and down…. Wonder how many of those folk were injured/died.
It reminds me of the Cocoanut Grove fire - Wikipedia
I’ve seen similar contents in other threads. These assertions are WRONG. (I have done safety planning and egress analysis for many years.)
For example, the International Building Code used by many US states does not require doors to swing in the direction of egress unless the area served has an occupant load of 50 or more persons. In a typical business occupancy (Use Group B), this would be a space of up to 5,000 square feet, which is a pretty big space.
As far as signage, exit signs are not required if an egress door is the ONLY door from the area. Furthermore, it is perfectly acceptable to put an exit sign on a door that does NOT swing in the direction of travel. This is often done when there is more than one door and the other doors are not exits.
Therefore, there are frequently egress doors that do not have exit signs and there are often doors with exit signs that do not swing outwards. Telling people the opposite is true is…not good.
But I will admit that the rules for assembly occupancies (Use Group A) are a bit more stringent.
Sprinkler systems are practically never used in Europe; they are only found in the USA and Canada. They are not of much use in case of a flush fire since their reaction is far too slow.
They jumped trying to put out the fire from below while it was small, this was not for entertainment.
Sure, one person is swatting at the fire with a towel. But at least one person to the left of center gave me impression that they were jumping up and down as I’ve seen young people do on dance floors. Another in the foreground also seems to be putting more effort into filming than anything constructive. Didn’t see anything to suggest they were trying to put the fire out, warn others, or escape. Unless the one person was trying to put out the fire with their phone which they were holding above their head while filming…
My bad. I searched on “Deep”, “Purple”, “smoke”, and “water”.
I can’t find it, but I once read an interview with a witness, who was asked why security didn’t rein in said stupid.
He replied, “It was a Frank Zappa concert in the seventies. A guy running around shooting off a flare gun didn’t really attract much attention”.
To be honest, I didn’t recognize your post as a reference to that song.
Note: News reports in Germany still refer to about or at least 40 dead, so it may be the case that the fire was so hot that investigators are not sure the remains of how many dead bodies are here.
An overflow of burn patients have been airlifted to France, Italy and Germany - 3 to my state of Baden-Württemberg alone.
Or this one. I was a tween at the time.
Recently, I saw a program (YT?) about it, and they said that a busboy, on his way out, went from room to room, got everyone’s attention, told them there was a fire and not to worry about paying for their meal because they needed to leave NOW, and go that way. He saved many, many lives by doing this.
Ceiling material was highly flammable polyurethane foam* used for soundproofing according to an analyst quoted in the following interview.
Why did the Crans-Montana fire spread so quickly? | World News | Sky News
People jumping up and down with cellphones filming the spreading fire are visible in video footage. Not good situational awareness.
*also implicated in The Station fire, and utilized by the serial arsonist in California (who turned out to be a fire department arson investigator), subject of Joseph Wambaugh’s The Fire Lover.
Also probably “familiarity breeds contempt”. People are familiar with fire and see it fairly often under safe conditions. We just don’t have the habit of automatically thinking of fire as scary. So, our first reaction to seeing fire under unsafe conditions is likely to be to look at it in curiosity rather than to run.
This appears to be the specific moment of ignition, with the woman sitting on the shoulders of a man just enough closer to the ceiling.
I did a dive on Newspapers.com when I saw a reference to a woman who died the following March from her injuries. Her lungs had been scorched and she never recovered. Even worse is that it was a big family gathering, and something like 6 of the 8 relatives who were there that evening succumbed to the fire, including 3 adult children from one family. One of them was 8 months pregnant, and the baby died with her; I don’t know if it was counted, but nowadays, it would have been, and she probably wasn’t the only one.
that and … cool, let me get this cool blooper/WCGW on my IG-reel, b/c “eyeballs” …
and it goes from fun and games to run for your life in 30 seconds …
I agree on the North American reliance in active fire protection (sprinklers). I understand they are used in Germany in residential and assembly occupancies, but I can’t swear by that (told to me at a fire protection conference in Germany by a German fire protection engineer, though). The rest of Europe doesn’t believe in sprinklers. The UK doesn’t seem to even be moving that way after Grenfell, which baffles me. There’s increasing use of water mist systems, but I’m not personally convinced of their effectiveness when compared to sprinklers.
As for sprinklers not working for a flash fire - this wasn’t a flash fire. Sprinklers are intended to control a fire by wetting the commodities and materials ahead of the fire, not specifically by putting water on the fire itself. Even a rapidly moving, brief fire will pop the nearby sprinklers, they take a remarkably low amount of heat to activate. The sprinkler will also put water on the fire, and slows it down to a crawl, and if we’re lucky it’ll put the fire out. Adding a surprisingly small amount of water to a compartment fire will usually hold the fire from reaching flashover indefinitely. The NIST testing that was done after the Station Nightclub fire in 2003 (which this fire is a near replay of in so many ways) showed sprinklers, had they been present in the Station, would have kept the fire to a minimum and given a massive increase in available safe egress time.
There has never - ever - been a multiple fatality fire in a building with an operating sprinkler system (multiple meaning 3 or more people). And the vast majority of the fire deaths in buildings with operational sprinkler systems are usually people that are intimate with ignition - someone who fell asleep smoking, or was next to the machine that went boom.
From 3700 miles away, sadly, there aren’t any new lessons here. The exact same conditions keep happening - flammable interior finish, locked/blocked/inadequate egress, overcrowding, lack of recognition/response by the occupants, and lack of active fire protection - with the exact same outcomes. Add in open flame (pyrotechnics, arson, or [supposedly] a lit match) and you’re guaranteeing a disaster. We saw it in 2003, we saw it in 1990, and we saw it in 1942. The only new thing is the resolution and number of the photos and video. The photos and videos of the fire starting are horrifically similar to the Station fire, and the post-fire photos look just like Coconut Grove - right down to the fire damage to the tipped-over tables and chairs.
(Firefighter in New England and fire protection engineer).
This YouTuber posted a snippet of footage from shortly after the fire started. MELTED FOAM IS DRIPPING FROM THE CEILING. I’m guessing that quite a few of the victims were asphyxiated long before the fire got to them. (Contains profanity.)
Great post
I’ve heard of polyurethane foam - the stuff that was involved in The Station fire and in Le Constellation - being referred as “solid gasoline”. In addition to being highly flammable when it burns it generates both toxic and flammable gasses, along with thick, black smoke.
The Station went from “we’re having a good time” to fully engulfed in about six minutes. So did this bar.
There is so very little time to escape after the first spark.