Building Construction for the fire service - Essay Example

Historically, the summer of 1871 in Chicago brought intense and uncontrollable fire, which burnt massive housing. Around 17,500 buildings burnt and 90,000 people were affected by the fire of 24 hour or more. Approximately 300 people died due to it and the dry summer with strong winds spread burning debris in all directions, which affected 73 miles of area. The building structure of that era entailed single layer construction style. The outside layer was responsible for fire protection, but the inside contained all wooden structure.

The main water supply and storage was also a wooden structured pine building. When the fire grew intense due to unavailability of proper extinguishing mechanism, (Schons, 2011) the fire blazed for unlimited duration until the rain cooled it off after 24 hours. The pine wood water storage building was the only water supply used by the fire department in those days and that water was also wasted due to collapse of that building. After this horrific fire incident and massive destruction the authorities bend down to look into the basic design of building structures in such catastrophic situations.

Therefore, in 1896 NFPA National Fire Protection Association devised a new way to protect massive fire in buildings; hence, introduced automatic sprinkler system. Initially, this system lacked proper standardization and many apprehensions from the researchers made it a little slow to become implementable. However, in 1901, majority of the Factory Mutual buildings were instilled with automatic sprinkler as an innovative fire protection tool, and this technical change in the construction of building became the prime way to prevent property from sudden fire.

Another deadly fire incident in Iroquois theater (1903) is considered the lethal fire event in the history of US that burnt 602 people. The wooden structure of the theatre, no exit passage, and ornamental fabric (curtain and