A Legacy of Fire Safety:

NIST Marks 50 Years of the Federal Fire

Prevention and Control Act of 1974

NIST Special Publication SP 1325

Intentionally left blank
 NIST Special Publication
NIST SP 1325

A Legacy of Fire Safety

NIST Marks 50 Years of the Federal Fire
Prevention and Control Act of 1974

Richard G Gann Brandon Hayes

Fire Research Division (emeritus) Public Affairs Office
Engineering Laboratory Office of the NIST Director

Robin Materese Natasha Hanacek

Public Affairs Office Public Affairs Office
Office of the NIST Director Office of the NIST Director

Matthew S Hoehler
Fire Research Division
Engineering Laboratory

This publication is available free of charge from:

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1325

September 2024

U.S. Department of Commerce

Gina M. Raimondo, Secretary

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Laurie E. Locascio, NIST Director and Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology
Certain equipment, instruments, software, or materials, commercial or non-commercial, are identified in this paper in order to
specify the experimental procedure adequately. Such identification does not imply recommendation or endorsement of any product
or service by NIST, nor does it imply that the materials or equipment identified are necessarily the best available for the purpose.

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Cover Photo
Photograph of a flame plume from a shed filled with wood cribs, impacting a mock residential structure in the Wildland-Urban
Interface. This image was captured during the Structure Separation Experiments at the NIST National Fire Research Laboratory.
(Credit: NIST)

Publication History
Approved by the NIST Editorial Review Board on 2024-09-20.

How to Cite this NIST Technical Series Publication

R.G. Gann; R. Materese; B. Hayes; N. Hanacek; M.S. Hoehler (2024) A Legacy of Fire Safety: NIST Marks 50 Years of the Federal Fire
Prevention and Control Act of 1974. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, NIST Special Publication (SP)
NIST SP 1325. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1325.

Author ORCID iDs

Richard G. Gann: 0000-0002-4172-1328
Robin Materese: 0009-0005-4169-623X
Brandon Hayes: 0009-0004-1512-2948
Natasha Hanacek: 0009-0009-9222-1428
Matthew S. Hoehler: 0000-0002-6049-7560

Contact Information
[email protected]
 Abstract
Over the past 50 years, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has effectively fulfilled its responsibilities
under the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974. For 70 years prior to that, the National Bureau of Standards (NBS),
renamed NIST in 1988, was a pioneer in fire safety and fire science. The highlights described in this publication were selected
to showcase technically diverse areas of NIST fire research that have advanced fire science and have led to or are in the
process of leading to substantial improvements in fire safety in the United States.

Acknowledgements
The authors thank the following colleagues for their contributions to drafts of this document: Jason Averill, Matthew Bundy,
Thomas Cleary, Michelle Donnelly, Glenn Forney, Daniel Madrzykowski, Alexander Maranghides, Randall McDermott,
Kevin McGrattan, Richard Peacock, Anthony Putorti, Ramesh Selvarajah, and Mauro Zammarano.

The authors also thank Jon Raedeke, Brian Gutierrez, and Sarah Henderson for the development of the web version of this
report.

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the organizations named in this report, whose efforts were instrumental in
achieving the results documented here. We also extend our thanks to the countless individuals who have contributed to
advancements in fire safety and share our vision of a future where unwanted fires no longer impede life safety, technological
innovation, or economic prosperity.

Key words: fire, Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974, fire research, fire safety, NBS, NIST

Author Contributions

Richard G. Gann: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Methodology, Writing- Original draft, Writing – review & editing.
Robin Materese: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision. Brandon Hayes: Timeline graphic design. Natasha Hanacek:
Timeline graphic design. Matthew S. Hoehler: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review & editing.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ................................................................................................8
Tests for Cigarette Ignition Resistance of Beds and Furniture ........... 12
Driving Residential Smoke Alarm Adoption.......................................... 14
Measuring Fire Size ................................................................................ 16
Fire Safety Evaluation System ............................................................... 18
Computer Fire Models and Practical Applications ............................... 20
Quantified Smoke Toxicity...................................................................... 22
Reconstruction of the Collapses of World Trade Center Buildings .... 24
Eliminating Deaths from Flaming Bed Fires ......................................... 26
Standard Reference Cigarettes for Ignition Tests ............................... 28
Performance of Firefighting Equipment and Tactics ........................... 30
Upgraded Smoke Alarm Performance Standards ............................... 32
Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Loss Mitigation ..................................... 34
Fire Behavior of Building Construction ................................................. 36
INTRODUCTION

Societal Priorities Regarding Fire

The relationship between humankind and fire evolved through a succession of societal priorities. The first of these priorities
was, ironically, to preserve fire. The first hominids saw the destructive power of fires started by lightning and volcanic activity.
They also realized that the flames provided warmth, trapped animals, and made food easier to chew. However, they didn’t yet
know how to start a fire, so sustaining a glowing ember was critical to survival.

The next priority was to preserve the town. Using fire for clearing land for agriculture engendered the rise of permanent
settlements. Natural fires were still a threat and were now joined by intentional fires for cooking and fabricating metal and
ceramic objects. Concern about great life loss and the loss of large parts of the town increased as the settlements grew and
became more crowded. The city of Rome had the first fire “code,” with required spacing between buildings, a bucket of water in
each dwelling, and delivery of firefighting water from the city’s superb aqueduct system. This wasn’t enough, and ancient Rome
experienced over forty devastating fires. Moreover, no such fire protection existed outside of Rome, and major urban
conflagrations continued in pre-industrial Europe and later in North America.

By the mid-20th century, the frequency of building-to-building fire spread had diminished in urban areas where there were
improvements in roads for bringing water and equipment to the fire, a general adoption of improved firefighting technology and
procedures, and the rise of concrete and steel for commercial construction. However, fires would continue to decimate the
wood-framed buildings in residential neighborhoods.

Humankind was about to embark on its third fire priority: control the fire within a building. In the United States, the technical
spearhead for this effort was a little-known federal agency based in Washington DC and whose name had nothing to do with
fire.

The National Bureau of Standards’ Impact on Fire Safety 1904 – 1974

Established in 1901 as the nation’s agency for the development and custody of measurement standards, the National Bureau
of Standards (NBS) dealt with practical matters of daily commerce, such as ensuring that the area of a parcel of land was
measured in a uniform way and that a pound of flour meant the same thing to the grocer and the consumer.

The NBS had first become involved in fire safety in response to a 1904 complaint about the incompatibility of different
shipboard fire hose couplings. The extent of this problem was highlighted during the 1904 Baltimore fire. The hose couplings on
fire trucks arriving from surrounding communities had different threads and could not connect to the Baltimore fire hydrants.
The trucks were sidelined and the fire destroyed about one-fourth of the city. Staff at the NBS surveyed the coupling threads
nationwide and in 1905 the fledgling National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) adopted its first standard for fire hose
couplings and adapters (now NFPA 1963) based on the NBS data.

This result gave rise to the realization that, whether an idea for providing fire safety might arise from science, engineering, or
intuition, turning that idea into a practical tool might well involve a standard method of measurement. This was NBS’s bread and
butter.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 8

In 1913, responding to the heavy loss of life and property in the United States, which was ten times that of any country in
Europe, NBS investigated the fire-resistant properties of building materials. The findings showed that poor measurement of
building materials properties was at the heart of the high domestic fire losses. As a result, in 1914 NBS established a Fire
Resistance Section (FRS), collaborating with NFPA, Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the Associated Factory Mutual Fire Insurance
Companies (now FM Global), and the National Board of Fire Underwriters to address the measurement problems associated
with building construction. NBS conducted room-scale tests of floors, ceilings, walls, and structural elements (e.g., columns and
beams) constructed of concrete, wood, and metal. Based on newly developed measurement methods, the products of this
program included:

• Quantitative criteria for determining a desired degree of resistance to room-to-room fire spread,
• A standard test method that became the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM), now ASTM International,
standard E119 for characterizing the duration over which building components could withstand a standard fire, and
• A compilation of performance data for numerous partitions and structural elements.

These products became the cornerstones of building codes in the United States. By the 1960s, nearly all conflagrations were
attributed to large natural disasters or buildings that had not been built and maintained according to code. As buildings and
their contents evolved, research on fire resistance in the re-named Fire Technology Division (FTD) extended into the 21st
century.

Following World War II, Americans increasingly moved into suburban housing and filled their new homes with furnishings and
clothes that were often made of new synthetic materials. Many of these products were easier to ignite and burned faster than
those made of wood, cotton, and other traditionally used natural materials. Thus, a new priority was to reduce the casualties
and property damage from the burning contents of a building, and the Congress funded additional fire safety research at NBS.

The first such legislative action was the Flammable Fabrics Act of 1953. The fabrics in some clothing (notably brushed sweaters,
children’s cowboy chaps, and children’s sleepwear) ignited easily and burned rapidly, resulting in deaths and disfiguring burn
injuries. As this research progressed, the Congress passed a second Flammable Fabrics Act in 1967. This directed the
Department of Commerce (DoC) to establish material and product flammability tests and regulatory criteria, the Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) (now the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) to investigate fires leading to
deaths and injuries, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce the regulations. In 1968, the DoC delegated its
responsibility to the NBS, which established an Office of Flammable Fabrics (OFF).

By 1974, the OFF had made substantial progress in controlling fires involving fabrics, including:

• A 1972 DoC standard for children’s sleepwear for ages nine months to six years old (16 Code of Federal Regulations
Part 1615). Each year, hundreds of children died, and a substantially larger number suffered disfiguring burn injuries
when their pajamas caught fire. NBS staff developed a test method for upward flame spread on a strip of a sleepwear
fabric. The fabric specimen was first washed fifty times, ensuring that the low flame spread would continue well into the
garment’s lifetime. Responsibility for maintaining and enforcing this regulation was transferred to the new Consumer
Product Safety Commission (CPSC). By the time the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) had been
established in the mid-1970s, deaths and serious injuries due to children’s sleepwear fires had all but ended.
• Prototype test methods for the resistance of mattresses and upholstered furniture to ignition by cigarettes, along with
recommended pass/fail criteria. (See Page 12.)
• Research on limiting the flaming behavior of textile floor coverings. Some flooring materials were rapidly spreading
flames to adjacent rooms and increasing the smoke obscuration along building evacuation paths. This was especially
problematic in schools and medical facilities. In 1970, NBS began developing a test method (now ASTM E 648) for
critical radiant flux (CRF), the minimum level of thermal radiation from an existing fire that will spread flames over a

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 9

 carpeted surface. NFPA 101, the Life Safety Code, soon added minimum CRF values for the flooring in various
categories of buildings, and carpeting is now seldom the primary carrier of fire from one room to another.

With the Fire Research and Safety Act of 1968, Congress took two significant steps forward in addressing the nation’s growing
fire loss problem, through:

1. Authorization of a broad fire research and engineering program at the NBS. The NBS created an Office of Fire
Technology (OFT) to unify the NBS fire expertise into a single, expanded program. This would combine the technical
threads of fire research and engineering that would soon be re-authorized under the Federal Fire Prevention and
Control Act of 1974.
2. Authorization of a National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control to undertake “a comprehensive study and
investigation to determine practicable and effective measures for reducing the destructive effects of fire throughout the
country.” The Commissioners were appointed in June 1971 and completed their two-year task on May 4, 1973.

The Commission’s report, entitled America Burning, depicted a dismal U.S. annual fire loss record: 12,000 deaths (later
updated to 6,200), 300,000 injuries (later updated to 100,000), 10.4 billion worth of destroyed property, and a total cost to the
economy of at least $19 billion. This was the highest per capita rate of death and property loss from fire of all the major
industrialized nations in the world. The Commission found shortcomings in virtually all areas that could contribute to reducing
these losses: knowledge of fire behavior; connection between fire science, safety standards, and building codes; fire incidence
data; firefighting technology; burn treatment centers; etc. The report characterizes the American public as unaware of or
indifferent to this grave threat to their well-being.

The Congress described this state of affairs as unacceptable. Within eighteen months, the Congress passed, and the President
signed, the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 (FFPCA).

The FFPCA had a profound effect on how the United States would improve the fire safety of its citizens over the next 50 years.
For the first time in the nation’s history, it was explicit that this was to be a collaborative effort of government, scientists and
engineers, the fire service, product manufacturers, testing labs, and codes and standards organizations. The setting of research
and action priorities would be furthered by a national system of fire data.

The FFPCA created a Fire Research Center (which became the Center for Fire Research at the NBS and is now the Fire Research
Division, FRD) to complement the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration (now the United States Fire
Administration) and the National Academy for Fire Prevention and Control (now the National Fire Academy). The Center had the
mission of “performing and supporting research on all aspects of fire with the aim of providing scientific and technical
knowledge applicable to the prevention and control of fires.” The FFPCA authorized the Center to perform, and/or support
through grants, basic and applied research on:

• The chemistry and dynamics of unwanted fires;

• The nature, yields, transport, toxicity, and corrosion of combustion products;
• The early stages of structure and outdoor fires, to improve early detection and fire control;
• Improved methods of providing first aid to victims of fires;
• Simple and reliable tests for determining the cause of death from a fire;
• Mental health characteristics of arsonists and the prediction and cure of such behavior;
• Firefighter stress and the alleviation of such conditions;
• Design concepts for increasing fire safety within structures, consistent with habitability, comfort, and human impact;
• Tests, demonstration projects, and fire investigations in support of these activities; and
• Other aspects of fires that are important in pursuing the objectives of the fire research program.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 10

The Act also directed wide dissemination of the results and their incorporation in building codes, fire codes, and other relevant
codes; test methods; fire service operations and training; and standards.

In 1975, additional funding for supporting extramural fire research grants was transferred to NBS from the National Science
Foundation’s Research Applied to National Needs program.

NBS Initiation of its Role under the FFPCA of 1974

The FFPCA’s authorization was extraordinarily broad, encompassing some disciplines of fire safety science that were already
mature and others for which the basic concepts were only under discussion. Therefore, the NBS Director requested a long-range
plan for selecting and implementing the NBS efforts under the Act. Completed in 1976, the Plan identified fire scenarios that
accounted for most of the Nations’ fire losses. For each scenario, there were technical tasks designed to reduce the frequency
and/or severity of the germane fires.

The planners estimated that completion of the tasks would result in the technical basis for halving fire losses within 20 years.
They also recognized that it might take more time to fully retrofit existing buildings and replace beds and furniture with less
flammable items. By 1994, the fatalities from unwanted fires had been reduced by about one-third. By 2022, new fire safety
standards and compliant products had reduced life loss by about one-half. These absolute reductions in loss of life occurred
over a period when the population of the United States increased by a factor of more than 1.5 times.

As attested by the thirteen highlights described in this publication, the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) –
NBS was renamed to NIST in 1988 – technical output provided the basis for many of the improvements in fire safety in the
United States over the past 50 years.

Additional Reading:
The following references and those following each of the highlights are for those who wish to learn more about the subjects they
accompany. Where available, each citation includes a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that is active at the time of this
publication. Some of these documents are only available for a fee or through a library with prepaid access, and others are
technical in nature. In either case, the freely available document abstract provides additional insight into the subject matter.

• Gross D. 1991. “Fire Research at NBS: The First 75 Years.” International Association for Fire Safety Science.
https://publications.iafss.org/publications/fss/3/119/view/fss_3-119.pdf.
• America Burning: The Report of the National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control. 1973. Emmitsburg MD.
United States Fire Administration. Amended in 1989 to include updated fire loss data.
https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/fa-264.pdf.
• Wright RN. 2003. “Building and Fire Research at NBS/NIST 1975–2000,” NBS BSS 179. Gaithersburg MD. National
Institute of Standards and Technology, https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.BSS.179.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 11

TESTS FOR CIGARETTE IGNITION
RESISTANCE OF BEDS AND
FURNITURE
Ignition of soft furnishings by cigarettes led to an estimated 27 % of
residential fire deaths in the United States, by far the leading cause
Standard test methods for
between 1971 and 1975. As shown in the figure below, when a lit evaluating the smoldering
cigarette falls on susceptible fabrics and padding materials, it can heat ignition resistance of soft
the materials sufficiently to initiate smoldering (non-flaming) combustion.
This generates heat, toxic gases, and visible smoke, all of which can lead
furnishings, particularly
to injury or death. Life-threatening conditions can arise within 30 minutes mattresses and residential
and can be considerably accelerated if the smoldering transitions to a upholstered furniture, have
flaming fire.
facilitated the regulation of
NIST had begun research on these fire scenarios under the Flammable
these products. These
Fabrics Acts and was thus able to respond to a request from the
Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to develop a viable and regulations have significantly
reproducible test method for measuring the Cigarette Ignition Resistance contributed to a reduction in
(CIR) of residential upholstered furniture (RUF).
fire-related fatalities.
NIST staff first identified the commercial cigarette which was the
strongest heat source. However, routine ignition testing of commercial RUF items was impractical since there were too many
combinations of size, shape, upholstery fabric, and padding material. Thus, as shown in the figure on the facing page, the
cigarette was used with a 250 mm (10 in.) chair mock-up to evaluate furniture padding materials and to identify classes of
upholstery fabrics. Class A fabrics smoldered little and did not ignite natural or synthetic padding materials. Class B, C, and D
fabrics required increasing sublayer thermal protection to prevent ignition. Good reproducibility of test results was obtained in a
55-laboratory study, and this mock-up research then became the
basis for all regulatory testing.

In 1975, the California Bureau of Home Furnishings (BHF, now the

California Bureau of Household Goods and Services) issued TB 117,
its version of the NIST test method; this was refined over the
following 38 years. The furniture industry adopted a similar but
voluntary standard. Both were superseded in 2021 by 16 CFR Part
1640, Standard for the Flammability of Upholstered Furniture. This
Federal standard that codified the 2013 version of TB 117 is
promulgated by the CPSC. The National Fire Protection Association’s
standard, NFPA 260, is a similar but more advanced standard test
method that, e.g., better measures the presence of smoldering. It is
cited in the U.S. fire codes and the Life Safety Code as the basis for
Dynamics of a lit cigarette on a soft surface. (Credit: NIST) limiting the ignition of upholstered furniture in public buildings.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 12

NIST staff also used their knowledge of cigarette ignition and
smoldering fires to propose a test method for the resistance of
mattresses to ignition by cigarettes, including recommended
pass/fail criteria. The test cigarette was the same as was used for
testing upholstered furniture fabrics and padding. The test method
involved laying several such cigarettes at multiple locations on a
completely bare mattress and on a second one where the mattress
and the cigarettes were covered with sheets. The test output was
whether any of the cigarettes led to sustained smoldering of the
mattress. The U.S. Department of Commerce used this research as
the technical basis for 16 CFR Part 1632, Standard for the
Flammability of Mattresses and Mattress Pads. The responsibility for
this regulation was transferred to the CPSC.
Schematic of the apparatus for testing RUF components.
The cigarette used in these test methods was replaced with NIST (Credit: NIST)
Standard Reference Material (SRM) 1196 to achieve consistency of
test results over time (See Page 28.)

This NIST research has had a profound effect on life safety. Between 1980 and 2004, fatalities from cigarette-initiated furniture
and bed fires each decreased by about two-thirds. This was attributed to the accuracy of the CIR tests for soft furnishings, the
replacement of pre-standard furnishings with compliant furniture and mattresses, the concurrent rise in installed residential
smoke alarms (See Page 14.), and a decrease in the number of smokers. Since 2004, a further reduction in fatalities was
attributed to regulation of the ignition propensity of cigarettes. (See Page 28.)

Additional Reading:
• Loftus JJ. 1978. “Backup Report for the Proposed Standard for the Flammability (Cigarette Ignition Resistance) of
Upholstered Furniture, PFF 6-76,” NBSIR 76-1438, National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg MD, 243 p.
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uaOzAAAAIAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA15&dq=loftus%3B+flammability&ots=X
kOvncwPFa&sig=xvisY2mh_TWbLRKRfqCykma2tfM#v=onepage&q=loftus%3B%20flammability&f=true.
• NFPA 260, Standard Methods of Tests and Classification System for Cigarette Ignition Resistance of Components of
Upholstered Furniture. 1983. National Fire Protection Association: Quincy, MA. 27 p. https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-
standards/all-codes-and-standards/list-of-codes-and-standards/detail?code=260. Current edition: 2024.
• 16 CFR Part 1632, 1984. Standard for the Flammability of Mattresses and Mattress Pads (FF 4-72, Amended).
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2019-title16-vol2/xml/CFR-2019-title16-vol2-part1632.xml.
• Technical Bulletin 117-2013, Requirements, Test Procedure, and Apparatus for Testing the Smolder Resistance of
Materials Used in Upholstered Furniture. January 2013. California Bureau of Electronic & Appliance Repair, Home
Furnishings, & Thermal Insulation: North Highlands, CA. 15 p. https://bhgs.dca.ca.gov/about_us/tb117_2013.pdf.
Initial version: 1975.
• Ahrens M. 2021. “Soft Furnishing Fires: They’re Still a Problem,” Fire and Materials 45:8-16.
https://doi.org/10.1002/fam.2874.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 13

DRIVING RESIDENTIAL SMOKE
ALARM ADOPTION
The 1960s saw the invention of the first self-contained smoke alarm and
the first battery-powered alarms. Initially sales were slow due to their high The home smoke alarm is
cost (as much as hundreds of dollars) and the lack of building and fire credited as the greatest
code requirements for their installation. In 1969, the U.S. Department of
success story in fire safety in
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched Operation
Breakthrough, a demonstration program designed to stimulate the the last part of the 20th
housing market through the development and adoption of new home century because it reduced
building technologies and codes. HUD tasked the NBS National Bureau of
losses from most types of
Standards, NBS (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology,
NIST) with developing model building code guidelines. NBS researchers home fires. NIST performed
included the installation of smoke alarms, based on prior work at the and led collaborative research
National Research Council of Canada (NRCC) that judged the detectors
that provided the technical
would substantially reduce life loss.
basis for the alarm location
Following the destruction of many dwellings by Hurricane Agnes in 1972,
HUD purchased 17,000 mobile homes (later called manufactured
and smoke sensitivity
homes) for temporary housing and included the NBS recommendation to standards. These standards
install smoke alarms in the procurement. Historically, loss of life and led to the installation of
property in mobile home fires had been significantly higher than the
average for all residential occupancies, and the experience with the HUD
smoke alarms in nearly all
mobile homes was similar during the one to three years they were homes, saving thousands of
occupied. Surprisingly, there had been no fire deaths. This was attributed lives each year.
to smoke alarms being present and alerting occupants so they could
safely evacuate or intervene, a true breakthrough. In 1975, the Mobile Home Manufacturing Association (now the Manufactured
Housing Institute) adopted the policy that every manufactured home produced by a member company be provided with one
smoke detector located outside the bedrooms.

NBS staff were curious about how well these devices performed in detecting fires. NBS and Underwriter’ Laboratories Inc. (UL)
conducted research in close collaboration with the residential smoke detector industry to develop a product approval standard
that assured proper performance and reliability. The companies provided prototype designs and quickly revised them in
response to the laboratory findings. This cooperative environment led to rapid improvements in the performance of detectors
which benefited both the public and the industry. The result was the first edition of UL 217 in 1974. This standard introduced a
new test box, in which smoldering cotton cord and a small pool of flaming (liquid) heptane were the smoke sources.

Recognizing that the complement to assuring the sensitivity of smoke alarms was a formal detector siting standard for their
effectiveness in housing, NBS sponsored the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI) and UL, again with the
close collaboration of the manufacturing industry, in conducting research to develop a minimum product performance and siting
standard for residential smoke alarms. They evaluated the effectiveness of commercially available products in homes that had

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 14

been designated for demolition (the Indiana Dunes tests). The
fires and their locations were representative of the major fatal
fire scenarios of the time. The results became the basis for
installation requirements as well as the number and locations
of alarms in NFPA 74, Household Fire Warning Equipment. In
1993, this was renamed to NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm and
Signaling Code.

The result of this research and its enabling of standards that

are cited in the United States building and fire codes has been
phenomenal. The annual production of smoke alarms, which in
1971 was approximately 50,000 units, is now at least 30
million units. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Locations of smoke detectors in an Indiana Dunes test.
(Credit: NIST)
and the United States Fire Administration (USFA) estimate that
the percentage of homes with at least one installed smoke alarm rose from less than 10 % in 1975 to at least 92 % in 2000.
Home smoke alarms were a major contributor to reducing the number of fire deaths by about half in that 25-year period.

Additional Reading:
• Beyler C, Lucht D, McNamee M, Johnson P, and Dubay C. 2017. The Affordable Home Smoke Alarm, Lyman Blackwell -
2015 DiNenno Prize Winner. Fire Science Reviews 62. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40038-016-0015-0.
• Bukowski RW, Waterman TE, and Christian WJ. 1975. “Detector Sensitivity and Siting Requirements for Dwellings,”
NBS-GCR 75-51. Gaithersburg MD. National Bureau of Standards.
https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2017/04/28/NISTGCR_75_51.pdf.
• Bukowski RW. 2001. “A History of NBS/NIST Research on Fire Detectors,” in Proceedings of the 12th International
Conference on Automatic Fire Detection. SP 965. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublication965.pdf.
• UL 217, Safety Standard for Single- and Multiple-Station Smoke Detectors. 1974. Northbrook IL. Underwriters
Laboratories, Inc. Modern version: 2015. (See Page 32 for the latest version which includes new technology.)
• NFPA 74, Household Fire Warning Equipment. 1978. Quincy MA, National Fire Protection Association.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 15

MEASURING FIRE SIZE

In a compartment fire, the heat generated by burning items increases

the temperature of the air, making the space difficult for survival. The The heat release rate of the
radiant heat from the flames and the elevated room temperature make
combustibles is the single
combustibles burn faster and can lessen the capability of the walls, floor,
and/or ceiling to contain the fire. Realizing this, in the 1950s fire most important variable in fire
scientists began developing apparatus for measuring the heat release hazard assessment. NIST’s
rate (HRR) from burning items as small as a book and as large as a living
discovery that oxygen
room. The empirical bases behind these HRR determinations led to
substantial error or variability, created operational difficulties, and
consumption is a valid
required knowledge of the fuel’s chemistry, which generally changes as it predictor of the heat release
burns. rate and subsequent invention
In the late 1970s, NIST staff discovered a direct link between the heat of the cone calorimeter
released from a burning material and the mass of oxygen consumed in
the burning, ΔO2. Calculations and testing of a large number of organic
transformed heat release rate
materials showed that the relationship was independent (within about measurement and became the
five percent) of the chemistry of the combustible and whether the basis for fire safety design and
burning was complete (burning to CO2 and water) or incomplete
commercial product standards
(generating significant CO and soot). In its simplest form, this is
represented by: around the world.
HRR (kJ) = 13.1 kJ/g times ΔO2 (g)

The figure below depicts the value of being able to measure HRR routinely and accurately. The red dashed curve (- - -) shows the
HRR from a furnished room with an ordinary upholstered sofa that has been ignited with a small flame. The sofa (whose arms,
back, and seat cushioning consist of padding material wrapped in a
decorative upholstery fabric) burns rapidly, generating a peak HRR of
9 MW. In less than 5 minutes after ignition, the environment in a
room containing such a sofa is too hot to survive. The black curve (—)
shows the HRR from a room with a sofa that is similar, except that the
padding material was wrapped with a fire barrier. This sofa burns so
slowly that occupants of the room have at least 20 minutes to
evacuate.

This measurement method was dubbed oxygen consumption

Heat release rate curves for a furnished living room calorimetry (OCC). OCC eliminated the shortcomings of prior HRR
including either a sofa with no fire barrier (dashed red measurement methods and is now the dominant technique for
curve) or a sofa containing a fire barrier (black curve).
(Credit: NIST) measuring HRR worldwide. In 2016, OCC was the technical

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 16

achievement selected to receive the second ever Philip J.
DiNenno Prize, awarded by the National Fire Protection
Association (NFPA) and considered the “Nobel Prize of
public safety.” OCC is commonly used by manufacturers to
characterize potentially combustible products and by
regulators to limit the fire hazard of some commercial
products. (See Page 26.)

In 1982, NIST staff invented the first device designed for

OCC, the cone calorimeter. The figure to the right is a
diagram of the apparatus. The top surface of a hand-sized
test specimen is subjected to thermal radiation from a
cone-shaped heater. This radiation heats the specimen as
if it were in a real developing fire. The measurements of
Schematic of the cone calorimeter. (Credit: NIST)
gas flow, temperature, and oxygen concentration are
made continuously, and the output is a plot of the
calculated HRR versus burn time. Of particular importance is the ease of determining the peak heat release rate (PHRR). The
PHRR correlates with the potential for the transition from a local fire to a fire that involves all combustibles in the room, with a
substantial increase of threat to occupants throughout a house.

There are now domestic and international standards for the fabrication and operation of the cone calorimeter, with more than
300 of these devices in use worldwide. There are also dozens of large OCC-based calorimeters being used to measure the HRR
from a fire as large as a burning two-story house. In 1988, the cone calorimeter was awarded an R&D 100 Award, often called
the “Oscar of Innovation,” and awarded annually to the top 100 innovations of the year in any field. In 2024, the cone
calorimeter received the 7th Philip J. DiNenno Prize.

Additional Reading:
• Parker WJ. 1977. “An Investigation of the Fire Environment in the ASTM E84 Tunnel Test,” NBS Technical Note 945,
Gaithersburg MD; National Bureau of Standards. An Investigation of the Fire Environment in the ASTM E 84 Tunnel Test
- William J. Parker - Google Books.
• Huggett CM. 1980. “Estimation of Rate of Heat Release by Means of Oxygen Consumption Measurements.” Fire and
Materials 4:61-65. https://doi.org/10.1002/fam.810040202.
• Babrauskas V. 1984. “Development of the Cone Calorimeter – A Bench-Scale Heat Release Rate Apparatus Based on
Oxygen Consumption.” Fire and Materials 8:81-95. https://doi.org/10.1002/fam.810080206.
• ASTM E1354. 1990. Standard Test Method for Heat and Visible Smoke Release Rates for Materials and Products Using
an Oxygen Consumption Calorimeter. West Conshohocken PA, ASTM International. Current edition: 2023.
• NIST Museum. 2023. The Cone Calorimeter: The Most Important Tool in Fire Safety Science. Gaithersburg MD: National
Institute of Standards and Technology. Online. https://www.nist.gov/nist-museum/cone-calorimeter-most-important-
tool-fire-safety-science.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 17

FIRE SAFETY EVALUATION
SYSTEM
In the United States, each occupiable facility must meet extensive sets of
requirements (prescriptions) referred to as a code. A building code The NIST-invented Fire Safety
provides a minimum level of safety for the design and construction of the Evaluation System is the
facility, so that it maintains its integrity in normal use and in the event of
a natural or human-caused catastrophe. This includes provisions for
forerunner of performance-
structural safety, fire safety, health requirements, energy conservation, based facility design
materials recycling, noise and air pollution, and accessibility. A fire code provisions in building and fire
prescribes ongoing requirements relating to fire prevention; evacuation;
explosion hazards arising from storage, handling, and use of dangerous
codes around the world. These
materials or from other specific hazardous conditions. The fire code provisions have enabled
works in tandem with the building code since the building code includes construction of iconic
the necessary construction requirements to enable fire safety.
buildings and have
The building and fires codes work well for most buildings but might not
substantially reduced the cost
accommodate new construction of unusual designs or innovative
materials. There are also an increasing number of instances when a of retrofitting existing
building is being repurposed or expanded, and the feasibility and cost of structures.
prescriptive code compliance are problematic.

In the 1960s, the United States Congress mandated that all healthcare facilities receiving federal funds conform to the
requirements of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Life Safety Code, NFPA 101. Most, if not all, such facilities were
not in compliance and some closed. The operators of others took corrective actions, but many could not adapt existing buildings
without a means to demonstrate that their fire safety level met that of NFPA 101. In 1975, the Department of Health, Education,
and Welfare (now the Department of Health and Human Services) began a joint effort with NIST to create an assessment
method that could assure at least a level of safety equivalent to compliance with NFPA 101.

The outcome of this research was the Fire Safety Evaluation System for Health Care Facilities (FSES-HCF), a quantitative system
for grading healthcare facilities in terms of fire safety, especially for determining equivalence to NFPA 101. Three major
concepts formed the basis for code equivalency: risk to occupants, the ability of the building and its fire protection systems to
provide safety commensurate with the risk, and credit for the redundancy realized from multiple fire safety measures.

For a proposed new or retrofitted design proposal, the System compiled a table of points for each of the building factors that
determine fire safety, including the type of construction, partitioning and interior finishes, hazardous activities, and fire alarm
and suppression systems. Experts awarded points for each factor, and the sum of those points was compared to the sum for a
hypothetical building that met the prescriptive requirements of NFPA 101. Estimating the cost of construction for each
sufficiently safe design proposal enabled getting the most safety from limited budgets. In the case of one premier hospital
seeking to modernize and increase capacity, the use of the FSES reduced the cost of compliance from an estimated $30 million
to $50 million (well outside the hospital’s resources) to less than $2 million. The estimated nationwide savings accruing to

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 18

hospitals and nursing homes from 1983 to 1989 were
approximately $1 billion in 1995 dollars, while at the same
time greatly enhancing overall fire safety in hospitals.

The FSES-HCF was adopted by the NFPA in the 1981 edition of

NFPA 101. NIST continued to develop FSESs for other
facilities, including prisons and jails, board and care homes,
and offices. In 1995, NFPA institutionalized FSESs with a
dedicated committee that sustains a new standard, NFPA
101A, assuring that each FSES appropriately reflects the
changing safety levels prescribed by building codes and
regulations. NFPA 101A and ICCPC codes. (Credit: NFPA and ICC)

The FSES is the conceptual forerunner of today’s performance-

based fire safety design, a discipline that applies detailed fire physics and current computational methods to achieve objectives
similar to those of the FSES. Many building codes around the world have incorporated a performance-based option for building
design. The International Code Council (ICC) Performance Code for Buildings and Facilities formalizes the identification of a
desired level of performance for a particular building and a process for incorporating all aspects of building design into an
appropriate solution.

Additional Reading:
• Nelson HE and Shibe AJ. 1980. “System for Fire Safety Evaluation of Health Care Facilities. NBSIR 78-1555-1,
Gaithersburg MD. National Bureau of Standards. https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/IR/nbsir78-1555-1.pdf.
• NFPA 101A. 1981. Guide on Alternative Approaches to Life Safety. Quincy MA. National Fire Protection Association.
Current edition: 2025.
• Chapman RE. 1982. A Cost-conscious Guide to Fire Safety in Health Care Facilities. NISTIR 5863. Gaithersburg MD.
National Bureau of Standards. https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/IR/nbsir82-2600.pdf.
• Chapman RE and Weber SF. 1996. Benefits and Costs of Research: A Case Study of the Fire Safety Evaluation System.
NISTIR 5863. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/IR/nistir5863.pdf.
• Hurley MJ and Rosenbaum ER. 2015. Performance-based Fire Safety Design. Society of Fire Protection Engineers,
Gaithersburg MD. 978-1482246551.
• 2021 ICC Performance Code for Buildings and Facilities. 2020. Washington DC. International Code Council. Current
edition: 2024.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 19

COMPUTER FIRE MODELS AND
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
With the rapid growth in computational power in the latter half of the 20th
century, fire safety professionals saw the potential for scientifically The NIST-created computer
sophisticated, computer-based tools to improve on the simple algebraic fire models CFAST (zone
equations previously used to predict fire behavior. NIST committed to
developing such models that addressed various user communities’
model) and FDS
phenomena of interest. The models were to be based on sound science; (computational fire dynamics
to be supported by unprecedented output validation, code verification, model) are the most widely
and documentation; and to include an easily understood visualization of
the complex model output.
used tools worldwide for
designing the fire safety
NIST pioneered the development of two types of computational fire
models whose evolution has continued over the subsequent 45 years, systems of prospective
and which have become pre-eminent worldwide for both design (fire buildings and reconstructing
hazard estimation) and forensic (fire loss reconstruction) use.
the fires in established
Zone Modeling The Consolidated Fire and Smoke Transport zone model
buildings.
(CFAST) divides a room into upper and lower layers (zones) separated by a
horizontal plane. The content and properties of each zone are spatially uniform. The user inputs fire growth and combustion
product data, and simplified laws of physics determine the temperature in each layer, the height of the horizontal plane, and the
spread of gases between the zones and through any room openings. CFAST can accomplish this in more than 60 rooms of a 10-
story building in less than one minute on a personal computer. CFAST is used extensively to resolve civil litigation and to assess
the equivalence of alternate approaches to providing building fire safety. The model is available for download free of charge at
https://pages.nist.gov/cfast.

HAZARD I, the world’s first computerized tool for estimating fire hazard, was a harbinger of the acceptance of zone models. It
consisted of FAST (a CFAST predecessor) augmented by (a) a model of human behavior based on interviews with fire survivors,
(b) a lethal smoke toxic potency calculator, and (c) embedded databases of materials fire properties. In a project of the National
Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) Fire Protection Research Foundation (FPRF), HAZARD I successfully replicated the survival
rate and cause of death profile for U.S. residential furniture fires, the deadliest scenario.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Fire Modeling The Fire Dynamics

Simulator (FDS) computes the three-dimensional, turbulent nature of
flame spread, smoke dispersion, and heat release. FDS tracks the
mixing of fuel and air, and its subsequent combustion over length scales
far smaller than the fire itself and over sub-second time intervals.

FDS is a tool used worldwide by industry, academics, and government

agencies and is available for download free of charge at
Smokeview rendition of the layer temperatures in a
CFAST simulation of a small fire in a two-story house
https://pages.nist.gov/fds-smv. FDS provides practical design guidance
with a stairwell open to the second floor and a second-
floor window. (Credit: NIST)

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 20

for indoor fire protection, such as for smoke handling systems, smoke
alarms, and automatic fire sprinklers. It is also the principal forensic
modeling tool used for residential and commercial fire reconstructions,
notably in the World Trade Center buildings. (See Page 24.) The Society of
Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) sponsors a training course on the use of
FDS and Smokeview (see below).

A forerunner of FDS, ALOFT (A Large Outdoor Fire Plume Trajectory), was

also a physics based CFD model. Following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill,
ALOFT was developed to assess whether the spread of smoke downwind of
a burning oil spill would pose a lesser hazard (at lower cost) than allowing
the oil itself to harm wildlife and contaminate a shore. Validated by good
agreement with large-scale, at-sea testing, and usable by on-site oil spill
responders, this NIST model enabled the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) Office of Response and Restoration to establish in
situ oil spill burning as a primary response technology rather than a method
of last resort.

Scientific Visualization A single fire simulation can generate billions of Smokeview rendition of the smoke in a Fire
values of temperature, gas and soot concentrations, and flow velocities. Dynamics Simulator (FDS) simulation of a fire in
a multi-story building. (Credit: NIST)
Understanding what has happened during the simulation requires software
that presents the complex output as colorful videos, still frames, and two- or three-dimensional plots.

NIST staff developed Smokeview to do this for zone models such as CFAST and CFD models such as FDS. Smokeview can
visualize fire realistically so that the user can “experience” the movement of flames, the loss of visibility due to soot, the flow
and temperature of air as it moves to and from the fire zone, and the resulting temperature profiles of the surfaces.

Additional Reading:
• Peacock RD, McGrattan K, Forney GP, and Reneke P. 2023. “CFAST - Consolidated Model of Fire Growth and Smoke
Transport (Version 7); Volume 1: Technical Reference Guide.” Section I, Introduction and Overview, pp 1-6. NIST
Technical Note 1889v1, Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
https://pages.nist.gov/cfast. Original version: 1993.
• Peacock RD, Jones WW, Bukowski RW, and Forney CL. 1991. “Technical Reference Guide for the HAZARD I Fire Hazard
Assessment Method,” Volume 2, Version 1.1. NIST Handbook 146. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards
and Technology. https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/hb/nisthandbook146v2-1991.pdf.
• McGrattan KD, McDermott RJ, Vanella M, Mueller E, Hostikka S, and Floyd J. 2024. “Fire Dynamics Simulator User’s
Manual.” NIST SP 1019. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology. https://pages.nist.gov/fds-
smv. Original version: 2000.
• Evans DD, Mulholland GW, Baum HR, Walton WD, and McGrattan KB. “In Situ Burning of Oil Spills.” 2001. Journal of
Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology 106(1):231-78.
https://doi.org/10.6028/jres.106.009.
• Forney GP. 2024. “Smokeview, A Tool for Visualizing Fire Dynamics Simulation Data; Volume 1: User’s Guide.” SP
1017-1. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology. https://pages.nist.gov/fds-smv. Original
version: 2000.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 21

QUANTIFIED SMOKE TOXICITY

Fire survivors have long reported trouble breathing during their escape,
and many fire victims were found to have only nonfatal skin burns, NIST research quantified
together suggesting that smoke inhalation could be an important cause smoke toxicity, showing that
of fire deaths. By the middle of the 20th century, combustion scientists
knew that fires generated hundreds of gases, as well as liquid and solid
fire deaths can be estimated
aerosols, which are collectively called smoke. Soon experiments with from key gas concentrations.
laboratory animals indicated that exposure only to smoke from burning NIST also found that reducing
materials could be fatal.
ignition risk and limiting fire
Since the lethality differed among the tested materials, it seemed likely
size can significantly decrease
that the variation was due to the smoke chemistry and/or its quantity.
This led to two practical questions: life loss, while regulating
1. Could the lethality of fire smoke be explained by the products based solely on
contributions of just a few toxic gases, thus simplifying the smoke toxicity has been
measurement of fire hazard?
largely unsuccessful.
2. Would restricting the use of some commercial products based
on lethal toxic potency alone significantly reduce life loss in fires?

NIST staff addressed the first question by establishing a quantitative basis for smoke toxicity measurement. They exposed
laboratory rats to smoke generated from both overheated and flaming materials and determined what concentration of smoke
was lethal to the rats during various exposures (defined as the smoke or gas concentration times the duration of contact with
the smoke or gas). NIST staff and grantees at the Southwest Research Institute then exposed rats to various concentrations of
individual gases and combinations of these gases. Their findings showed that the contributions of just five combustion gases
(CO, CO2, HCN, HCl, and HBr), along with the effect of diminished O 2 concentration, could predict the smoke lethality of
chemically diverse materials to within 30 %. NIST scientists named the relationship among the gases as the N-gas equation,
where N was equal to six, as contrasted with the hundreds of fire gases. They also found that the rats were incapacitated (e.g.,
unable to move) at exposures of about one-third to one-half of the lethal exposure.

These results suggested that extensive and costly animal testing of the smoke from burning materials was not necessary. For
nearly all materials composed of C, H, O, N, Cl, and Br atoms, the potential for lethality would be estimated from the N-gas
equation, the concentrations of the N gases, and the duration of the exposure. Laboratory animal testing would then only be
necessary if the chemistry of a material were suspected to lead to unusual smoke composition. If the lethality from the smoke
exposure tests differed from the result predicted from the gas concentration measurements, a more thorough evaluation of the
potential fire hazard would be in order. This approach became the basis of the first and only standardized toxic potency
measurement method in the United States, as promulgated in the nominally identical NFPA 269 and ASTM E1678 standards.

Fire toxicologists have identified only two materials whose lethal toxic potency was well outside the 30 % uncertainty of the
N-gas equation. One material, composed entirely of fluorine (F) and carbon (C) atoms, exhibited extreme toxic potency, i.e.,
animal deaths occurred when very little smoke was present. Further experiments found that this was due to the absence of
hydrogen atoms in the test specimen, a situation that does not exist in realistic, life-threatening residential fires because of the

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 22

concurrent burning of materials containing hydrogen atoms. The fluorine atoms end up in hydrogen fluoride (HF), which was
then added to the list of N gases, raising N to seven. In non-NIST tests of the second (exploratory) material, the animals showed
unusual toxicity, i.e., their symptoms were unlike those due to the N gases. Chemical analysis of the material, its additives, and
the smoke showed that the burning created a nerve gas. The production of such materials was curtailed by materials
manufacturers.

Addressing the second question required insight into the components of the fire process that lead to threats to life safety. While
laboratory testing found a range of smoke toxic potency values, the risk of life loss from a burning product depends at least as
heavily on other aspects of its contribution to fire severity. Most fire fatalities result from fires involving multiple materials, high
burning rates, or people being very close to the smoldering or flames. Thus, products that (a) are difficult to ignite, (b) represent
a small fraction of the fuel mass in a compartment, (c) burn slowly, and (d) generate little visible smoke are of lower risk even if
their smoke toxic potency is above “normal.” Indeed, success to date in limiting life loss from the burning of commercial
products has been achieved by reducing the probability of ignition and the maximum fire size. Attempts at regulating
commercial products based solely on high smoke toxic potency have failed for lack of projecting a credible expectation of a
substantial reduction in life loss.

Due to these findings and the increasing societal concern regarding live animal testing, there has been no new smoke toxicity
research conducted at NIST in over two decades.

Additional Reading:
• Babrauskas V, Levin BC, et al. 1991. Toxic Potency Measurement for Fire Hazard Analysis. NIST Special Publication
827. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublication827.pdf.
• ASTM International. 1995. ASTM E1678, Standard Test Method for Measuring Smoke Toxicity for Use in Fire Hazard
Analysis. West Conshohocken PA. ASTM International. Current edition: 2024.
• National Fire Protection Association. 1996. NFPA 269, Developing Toxic Potency Data for Use in Fire Hazard Modeling,
Quincy, MA. National Fire Protection Association. Current edition: 2022.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 23

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE
COLLAPSES OF WORLD TRADE
CENTER BUILDINGS
The September 11, 2001 (9/11) attack on the United States using
hijacked airliners shocked the world. The resulting fires led to the In response to NIST
collapse of the two impact-damaged, 110-story towers (World Trade recommendations following its
Center (WTC) 1 and WTC 2) in downtown Manhattan killing more than
2,700 building occupants, emergency responders, bystanders, and
investigation of the 9/11
aircraft passengers and crew. The 47-story building WTC 7 collapsed disaster, numerous and
later that day, also the result of uncontrolled fires. In response, the U.S. substantive upgrades have
Congress passed the National Construction Safety Team Act (NCSTA)
been added to the nation’s
which expanded NIST’s authority to investigate “events causing the
failure of a building or buildings that has resulted in substantial loss of building and fire codes that
life or that posed significant potential for substantial loss of life.” NIST will mitigate against future
quickly undertook an investigation to determine how and why the three
collapses of tall buildings and
buildings collapsed; why the injuries and fatalities were so high or low;
how the buildings were designed, constructed, and operated; and improve the safety of
aspects of current fire and building codes and standards that warranted occupants and emergency
revision.
responders.
While many high life-loss building fires during the previous century had
been investigated, this reconstruction was unprecedented in its technical demands and societal importance. NIST staff
obtained sufficient photographs and video of the three buildings that day to enable a visual rendering of the spread of the fires,
the distortion of the buildings, and their eventual collapse. NIST and its contractors modeled the aircraft impact on each of the
two towers, as well as the damage to each building structure and the thermal fire insulation on the structural members. The
NIST Fire Dynamics Simulator computational software (See Page 19) was greatly enhanced to reproduce the fire spread and
superimpose the generated heat on the equally innovative thermal-structural models of the respective buildings.

The airplanes did considerable damage to the columns and floor assemblies in WTC 1 and WTC 2. However, each tower
withstood the impact and would have remained standing were it not for the dislodged structural insulation and the rapidly
spreading, multi-floor fires ignited by the aircraft’s burning jet fuel. The automatic fire sprinklers in the buildings might have
controlled the flames, but the aircraft impact had damaged the water supply lines, rendering the sprinklers nonfunctional.

In WTC 1, the fire-weakened floors on the side opposite the aircraft impact sagged, pulling inward on the heat-weakened
perimeter columns. As more columns weakened, the structure could no longer support its mass, and the building collapsed in
102 minutes. In WTC 2, the structural damage was more severe than that of WTC 1, and the building collapsed in just 56
minutes, also as a result of fire-weakened structural elements. WTC 7 was struck by the debris from the collapse of WTC 1. The
structural damage was relatively minor, but the debris ignited furnishing fires on at least 10 floors. Over the next seven hours,
without an available water supply for the sprinkler system, the fires spread around the building, weakening the floors and their
connections to a critical interior column. The unsupported column buckled, initiating further structural weakening and the global
collapse of the building.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 24

The life loss in the towers was high because the aircraft destroyed the evacuation routes for nearly all occupants on or above
the impact zones. The evacuation by those occupants who were below the impact zones was remarkably efficient, in part due to
the towers being far less occupied than normal. Nearly all below the floors of impact escaped despite the unexpected collapses
of the buildings. The unprecedented collapses were also responsible for the loss of emergency responders who were assisting in
the evacuation. The occupants of WTC 7 began evacuating while the towers were burning, and WTC 7 was empty at the time of
its collapse.

NIST recommended 31 improvements to address the fire safety of tall buildings, occupants, and emergency responders. NIST
staff partnered with other professionals to effect changes in the nation’s building and fire codes, including the following:

• Fire-resistance ratings of structural components must increase by one hour in buildings 128 m (420 ft) or taller.
• Members of the structural frame of a building to have the higher fire resistance rating commonly required for columns.
• Three times the bond strength of fireproofing to structural components throughout buildings 23 m (75 ft) to 128 m
(420 ft) tall and seven times the bond strength throughout buildings taller than 128 m (420 ft).
• In buildings over 128 m (420 ft) tall, at least two water supply risers for each sprinkler zone, located in stair enclosures
that are to be remotely located from each other.
• Exit stairways to be enclosed and meet minimum separation criteria.
• An additional exit stairway for buildings more than 128 m (420 ft) tall and an increase of 50 percent in exit stairway
width in all new buildings with floor areas exceeding about 1,400 sq m (15,000 sq. ft).
• Specially protected elevators for occupant evacuation in fires and other emergencies for buildings over 128 m (420 ft).
• Luminous markings along the exit paths in buildings over 23 m (75 ft) tall.
• Radio coverage for emergency responders within the building to be as effective as public safety communication
systems at the exterior of the building.
• Installed stair descent devices for use by mobility-impaired occupants.
• Structural design that meets the provisions in a new standard designed to keep modest local damage from resulting in
the collapse of the entire building.

Many of these responses to the NIST recommendations have been incorporated into the Freedom Tower and the re-built WTC 7.

Additional Reading:
• Gann RG, ed. 2005. Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster: Final Report of
the National Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Towers, NIST NCSTAR 1, National
Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.ncstar.1.
• Gann RG, ed. 2008. Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster: Final Report on
the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, NIST NCSTAR 1A, National Institute of Standards and Technology,
Gaithersburg, MD. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.NCSTAR.1a.
• Phan LT, McAllister TP, Gross JL, and Hurley MJ, eds. 2010. “Best Practice Guidelines for Structural Fire Resistance
Design of Concrete and Steel Buildings.” NIST TN 1681. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and
Technology. https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/technicalnotes/nist.tn.1681.pdf.
• Boss A. 2023. “New Building Standard Paves the Way for Collapse-Resistant Structures.” Gaithersburg MD. National
Institute of Standards and Technology. https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2023/06/new-building-standard-
paves-way-collapse-resistant-structures.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 25

ELIMINATING DEATHS FROM
FLAMING BED FIRES
Historically, bed fires were among the most hazardous fires in homes.
These fires represented only 3 % of the fires in the United States but The mattress industry
resulted in 16 % of the fatalities. Concerned about the prominent role of
redesigned their products to
mattresses in flaming fires, the International Sleep Products Association
(ISPA) teamed with NIST and the two regulatory authorities, the
comply with a federal
Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the California Bureau regulation, which is based on
of Home Furnishings and Thermal Insulation (BHFTI) (now the California a NIST-developed test method.
Bureau of Household Goods and Services) to develop a fire safety
regulation for mattresses.
Fatalities from flaming bed
Reducing the hazard from a burning bed posed a difficult engineering
fires decreased by about two-
and regulatory challenge since a made-up bed consists of multiple thirds within a decade, a
products purchased separately from different manufacturers. The period over which two-thirds of
mattress is typically supported on an upholstered or metal foundation
the pre-regulation mattresses
and is surrounded by bedclothes (such as sheets, a blanket or comforter,
and pillows). Measuring the fire contribution of each of the bed had been replaced.
components was possible. However, determining how to burn each of
these components separately and then combine their individual fire performance to represent the burning behavior of an
assembled bed was beyond even today’s scientific capability.

Beginning in 1999, NIST staff developed a more pragmatic approach, treating a set of bedclothes as a single product. The real-
life ignition source (e.g., a match or candle) would ignite the bedclothes which would, in turn, become the (much larger) fire to
which the mattress and foundation were exposed. NIST experiments with a variety of bedclothes sets led to the identification of
a “standard” severely burning set of bedclothes and a map of where the most intense flames impacted the mattress and
foundation. The staff then designed a twin burner that accurately and repeatably simulated the threat of the bedclothes fire to
the mattress and foundation. The NIST test method involved exposing
a mattress/foundation design to ignition by the burner and measuring
the peak heat release rate (PHRR), the maximum heat generated as
the bed burns, using oxygen consumption calorimetry. (See Page 16.)

Further testing and analysis led to the estimation of the PHRR of a

“fire-safer” mattress/foundation. The PHRR from a non-conforming
flaming bed was about 2 MW (twin-size) to 4 MW (king-size). At a heat
release rate of about 1 MW in a modest-size bedroom, a local fire
quickly involves all the other combustible materials in the room, the
phenomenon called flashover. The environment within the fire room
becomes lethal, and the fire and smoke spread to adjacent rooms and
escape routes increases the risk of life loss elsewhere in the building.
Schematic of the twin burner being applied to a Data from the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS),
mattress/foundation set. (Credit: NIST)
maintained by the United States Fire Administration (USFA) and

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 26

analyzed by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and NIST, showed that reducing the potential for bedroom flashover
should significantly reduce bed fire casualties.

The flames from the bed fire also had to be small enough that it was unlikely that nearby furnishings (e.g., an upholstered chair
or a dresser) would be ignited, with the combined PHRR resulting in room flashover. NIST staff measured the heat required to
ignite such items located at different distances from the burning bed. NIST’s overall conclusion was that a mattress/foundation
with a PHRR below 400 kW should limit fire spread and lead to a measurable and significant reduction in lives lost from flaming
bed fires.

A California regulation by the BHFTI became effective on January 1, 2005. This was superseded by a federal regulation, 16 CFR
Part 1633, issued by the CPSC, which became effective on July 1, 2007. The CPSC chose a limiting PHRR value of 200 kW
during a 30-minute test. A requirement that the total heat released during the first 10 minutes of a test should not exceed
15 MJ further enhanced people’s time for escape early in the fire. The manufacturers designed their new products, with ISPA
providing examples of successful designs. The actual PHRR values of the compliant mattresses were typically below 100 kW.

In 2021, NIST analysis of the NFIRS database verified that this collaboration of fire scientists, product manufacturers, and
regulators had been successful. By the end of the first decade of the low PHRR mattress sales, the annual number of lives lost
from flaming bed fires had decreased by about two-thirds and reported injuries had decreased by about one-third. Using ISPA
sales data and different models for mattress replacement by consumers, NIST estimated that two-thirds of the old mattresses
had been replaced over the 10 years. These comparable values of avoided fatalities and old mattresses replaced suggest that
when all pre-standard mattresses have been replaced, fatalities from flaming bed fires will become uncommon.

Additional Reading:
• Ohlemiller TJ, Shields JR, McLane RA, and Gann RG. 2000. “Flammability Assessment Methodology for Mattresses,”
NISTIR 6497, Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology, 95 pp.
https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.6497.
• Ohlemiller TJ and Gann RG. 2002. "Estimating Reduced Fire Risk Resulting from an Improved Mattress Flammability
Standard," NIST Technical Note 1446, Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology, 81 pp.
https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.1446.
• 16 Code of Federal Regulations Part 1633. 2006. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Final Rule Standard for the
Flammability (Open Flame) of Mattress Sets. Federal Register 2006:71(50):13472. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-
16/chapter-II/subchapter-D/part-1633.
• Gilbert SW, Butry DT, Davis RD, and Gann RG. 2021. “Estimating the Impact of the Fire Safety Standard 16 CFR Part
1633 on Bed Fire Outcomes.” Fire and Materials: 45(1)17-27; https://doi.org/10.1002/fam.2932.
• National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS). https://www.usfa.fema.gov/nfirs/about.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 27

STANDARD REFERENCE
CIGARETTES FOR IGNITION TESTS
Even before the passage of the Federal Fire Prevention and Control
Act of 1974, cigarettes were known to be the most common ignition
NIST Standard Reference
source in fatal fires in the United States. While initial research and Material® (SRM) cigarettes
regulation focused on the ignited objects (beds and upholstered have established and stabilized
furniture), in the 1980s attention shifted to the cigarette itself. By
1993, research had established that reducing the ignition propensity
the difference in ignition
of cigarettes (the likelihood that a cigarette would ignite another propensity between the strong
flammable object) was feasible and had developed prototypes of test cigarettes used to test
methods to measure ignition propensity. In 2000, a major cigarette
manufacturer successfully test-marketed a cigarette with reduced
upholstered furniture and beds
ignition propensity. In 2001, the State of New York Office of Fire for ignition resistance and the
Prevention and Control and NIST commenced research to support the required low ignition strength
first-ever rule requiring all cigarettes to be of reduced ignition
cigarettes for smoking. The
propensity. In 2002, the NIST test method became an ASTM
International (ASTM) standard, ASTM E2187; and on July 1, 2004, the two SRMs are a keystone in
New York rule went into effect. By 2011, there were similar regulations the substantial reduction in
in all other U.S. States, generally citing the 2009 version of ASTM
fatalities from cigarette-
E2187.
initiated fires.
In the NIST test
method, a trial begins when a lit cigarette is placed on a substrate
composed of 10 sheets of filter paper. The outcome of a trial is whether the
cigarette burns its full length or goes out. The figure on the left shows the
results of trials of three distinct types of cigarettes. The test output is the
percentage of 40 trials that result in a full-length burn (PFLB). The regulatory
criterion is that the PFLB be no greater than 25. The packs of compliant
cigarettes are labeled FSC, for fire standard compliant.

In today’s commercial cigarettes, the paper wrapping the tobacco column

Results of trials (left to right): full-length burn of a typically contains circumferential bands. A band reduces the air passing
non-FSC filter-tip cigarette; a non-FSC, non-filter-tip through the paper to the smoldering tobacco, slowing the burning rate.
cigarette, and an FSC cigarette. (Credit: NIST)
Concurrently, some of the heat from the combustion is absorbed by the filter
paper substrate. Both processes lower the temperature of the smoldering
zone. The cigarette goes out when this temperature becomes too low for the
tobacco to continue smoldering.

For the State regulations to be effective, it is essential that there be a

Schematic of a cigarette showing the bands in the “calibrator” for the test laboratories; and NIST developed specifications for
wrapping paper to slow burning rate. (Credit: NIST)

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 28

and procured a large supply of a Standard Reference Material®
(SRM) cigarette, designated SRM 1082. This ensures that (a)
manufacturers and regulators all obtain the same PFLB for each
commercial cigarette brand-style and (b) the performance of each
laboratory performing the test does not change over time. The
ASTM E2187 output value of SRM 1082 is 12.6 ± 3.3 PFLB, a value
that is safely below the regulatory pass/fail criterion. SRM 1082
cigarettes became available in April 2005. Subsequent versions of
ASTM E2187 require verifying the performance of the total test
system and operator using a cigarette whose ignition propensity
using ASTM E2187 has been established, noting that SRM 1082 is Annual fatalities from cigarette-initiated fires in the State
of New York. (Credit: NIST)
widely used for this purpose. The State of New York used SRM
1082 for quality control in its testing of more than 1,000 off-the-
shelf brand-styles of cigarettes to verify compliance with its rule.

The success of the regulations soon became clear. New York State
experienced a 40 % decline in fatalities from cigarette-ignited fires.
Five independent analyses of state or federal data averaged 30 %
declines.

Meanwhile, NIST staff recognized that sustaining the life safety

gains from these laws required that the commercial test cigarette
Packs of standard reference cigarettes. (Credit: NIST)
(CTC) used in bed and furniture testing be a much stronger igniter
than the FSC cigarettes. Two occurrences reinforced this need. NIST
staff found that the PFLB values for CTC packs made from 1992 through 2008 had decreased by nearly half; and in 2008 the
CTC manufacturer said that it would only make the FSC version, a low ignition strength cigarette.

The creation of a second SRM cigarette, SRM 1196, resolved both issues. Its specifications were based on the performance of
the 1992 CTC, restoring the fire safety improvement that might have been lost due to the weaker CTCs. The purchase of a large
supply of SRM 1196 cigarettes obviated such changes in test severity in the future. This SRM became available in September
2010. When the supply of the SRM approached depletion, NIST procured a replenishment batch, SRM 1196a.

The respective test standards now include the use of SRM 1196 or equivalent to calibrate the testing of mattress and furniture
materials.

Additional Reading:
• Jones-Smith J and Harwood B. 1993. “Overview: Practicability of Developing a Performance Standard to Reduce
Cigarette Ignition Propensity.” Bethesda MD. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/el/fire_research/Overview_Cigarette_Report.pdf.
• ASTM International. 2002. ASTM E2187, Standard Test Method for Measuring the Ignition Strength of Cigarettes. West
Conshohocken PA. ASTM International. Current edition: 2024.
• Gann RG, Kim I, Lund SP, Guthrie WF, Robbins AR, Hnetkovsky EJ, and Davis RD. 2021. “The Roles of Standard
Cigarettes in Assuring the Ignition Resistance of Soft Furnishings,” Fire and Materials 45:37-55.
https://doi.org/10.1002/fam.2931.
• Standard Reference Materials. National Institute of Standards and Technology. https://www.nist.gov/srm.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 29

PERFORMANCE OF FIREFIGHTING
EQUIPMENT AND TACTICS
Firefighter line of duty injuries and deaths due to equipment failures and
ineffective firefighting tactics raised alarms at fire departments, the
NIST has provided the
National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the
National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the United States Fire technical basis for upgrading
Administration (USFA), and NIST. Prompted by these concerns, NIST firefighting equipment
researchers began conducting studies in the 1990s to reduce the risk to
standards that protects
firefighters and the losses from the fires they attend. The following are
recent successes in the research and the implementation of the results.
firefighters. NIST has applied
Personal Alert Safety Systems (PASS) When firefighters stop moving, their
fire dynamics to firefighting,
PASS devices alarm, indicating a possible emergency. Deaths have leading to new and modified
occurred when the device’s signal could not be heard, and the firefighter tactics that the fire service
could not be located. NIST found that some devices failed to operate
properly at elevated fireground temperatures. NIST alerted NIOSH, which
has adopted. The continuing
issued an emergency safety warning. Based on NIST input and data, a benefit has been safer, more
new requirement for operation at high temperature was added to the effective firefighting.
2007 edition of NFPA 1982, Standard on Personal Alert Safety Systems.

Thermal Imaging Cameras These devices visualize heat from building occupants and firefighters, as well as hot spots from the
fire. The camera images must distinguish these heat sources from a warm background while operating at elevated fireground
temperatures. Initially there was no standard test or performance criteria for camera capability. NIST staff developed a test for
determining how well and for how long a camera could detect a small temperature difference when the camera itself was at
temperatures up to 260 °C (500 °F). These results became the technical basis for elevated temperature testing in the first
edition of NFPA 1801, Standard on Thermal Imagers for the Fire Service in 2010. A fire department could now obtain these life-
saving tools with certified precision.

Portable Radios Firefighters reported that some of their radios were unable to transmit information during fireground
operations, which impedes fireground operations. NIST identified that the problem was due to a drift in radio transmission
frequency at fireground temperatures. Data from these studies and input from the NIST researchers provided the technical
foundation for the radio performance criteria in the 2021 first edition of NFPA 1802, Standard on Two-way, Portable RF Voice
Communications Devices for use by Emergency Services Personnel in the Hazard Zone.

Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) Firefighters reported incidents of SCBA facepieces becoming opaque or melting
during firefighting. Using room-scale experiments combined with computer modeling, NIST determined that the distortions
resulted from exposure to high radiant heat flux from the hot fire environment. The staff then developed a radiant heat test and
performance criteria for NFPA 1981, Standard on Open-Circuit Self-contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) for Emergency
Services. As a result, new firefighter masks continue to protect the firefighter and their vision during fireground operations.

Fire-Dynamics-based Firefighting Between the late 1970s and the late 2000s, reported fires in structures had decreased by
half, while firefighter fireground fatalities per 100,000 fires had increased by two thirds. The reasons were that (a) houses had
become larger, with less air leakage (for energy efficiency), lightweight construction, and less compartmentation; and (b) the

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 30

mass and burning rates of the furnishings had increased. The classic fire triangle shows that a fire needs fuel, air, and heat. Fire
dynamics, the science of how fires start, spread, develop, and extinguish, adds the concept of rate: fires were growing faster
from an early, fuel-limited state to an oxygen-limited state. The fire service needed to gain an understanding of the synergy
among these changing factors and to adapt firefighting operations and training accordingly.

Over the past 20 years, NIST conducted research with the fire service to bring fire dynamics into the process of fighting today’s
fires. At the core was the concept of wind-aided flame spread. An oxygen-limited fire burns faster when a new supply of oxygen
arrives, e.g., through an opened door or a broken window. This new air supply creates a flow path, the space between an inlet
and an outlet through which heat and smoke move from a higher pressure to a lower pressure. The message was clear for
firefighters: keep the wind or intake air at your back.

Fighting a fire burning in a wood-framed basement can be especially hazardous to firefighters on the floor above. NIST found
that the large mass of wood in the basement can escalate a fire’s intensity, while the insulation of common floor materials can
keep main floor temperatures below 100 °C. Thus, even with a thermal image camera, firefighters might be unaware of the fire
below their feet until they fall through the floor. Historically, firefighters fought their way down the stairs to suppress a fire. By
doing this, they place themselves in the flow path from the fire in the basement to the open front door through which they had
entered the house, a dangerous situation. NIST and Underwriters Laboratories (UL) conducted basement fire experiments,
finding that applying water through a window into the fire area for just 60 seconds quickly mitigated both hazards.

NIST research has spawned a new approach to fire operations based on fire dynamics, validated with real-building tests, and
delivered in a visually compelling manner via formal reports, compact discs, videos of the tests, streaming on multiple channels,
and presentations to fire service organizations. Several of these studies have been incorporated into such training as the
International Association of Fire Fighters’ Fireground, Survival Course and courses taught by the USFA. The leadership of the Fire
Department of the City of New York (FDNY) quickly added the fire dynamics-based findings to their firefighter training. In 2021,
NFPA published the first edition of NFPA 1700, Guide for Structural Fire Fighting.

Additional Reading:
• Donnelly MK, Davis WD, Lawson JR, and Selepak MJ. 2006. “Thermal Environment for Electronic Equipment Used by
First Responders.” NISTIR 1474, Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=101375.
• Donnelly MK, Davis MK, and Selepak MJ. 2007. “Performance of Thermal Imaging Cameras in High Temperature
Environments.” NIST TN 1491. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/TN/nbstechnicalnote1491.pdf.
• Donnelly MK, Young WF, and Camell D. 2014. “Performance of Portable Radios Exposed to Elevated Temperatures.”
NIST TN 1850. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.1850.
• Putorti A, Mensch A, Bryner N, and Braga G. 2013. “Thermal Performance of Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus
Facepiece Lenses Exposed to Radiant Heat Flux.” NIST TN 1785. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and
Technology. http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.1785.
• Kerber S and Madrzykowski D. April 2009. “Evaluating Fire Fighting Tactics Under Wind Driven Conditions.” 2-DVD set,
available from the Fire Research Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology.
• Madrzykowski D. 2013. “Fire Dynamics: The Science of Fire Fighting.” International Fire Service Journal of Leadership
and Management 7:1-16. https://www.ifsjlm.org/sites/default/files/past-edition-pdfs/IFSJLM_Vol7.pdf.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 31

UPGRADED SMOKE ALARM
PERFORMANCE STANDARDS
After decades of declining fatalities from home fires, the numbers have
been stable for the last 15 years. The smoke alarm technologies of the New standards for smoke
1970s (ionization and photoelectric) had been remarkably effective in
alarms and detectors, largely
reducing losses from nearly all types of home fires. (See Page 14.) Since
then, homes and the combustible products within them have evolved. For
informed by NIST research,
example, open floor plans became more common, the mass of enhance their sensitivity to
combustibles increased, and furnishings became padded with faster both smoldering and flaming
burning flexible polyurethane foam (FPUF). Nuisance alarms, mostly from
cooking, were common, and occupants responded by deactivating the
fires, while reducing sensitivity
stand-alone smoke alarms (whose operation is specified in ANSI/UL 217) to nuisance smoke from
and the smoke detectors (whose operation is specified in ANSI/UL 268) cooking. These advancements
which transmit their fire “awareness” to a central control panel.
are expected to reduce fire
In the 1990s, NIST began formulating a plan to investigate smoke alarm
performance in prevalent fire scenarios using modern furniture. NIST
severity and save lives.
enlisted the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the United States
Fire Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, UL,
the National Fire Protection Association, the National Research Council of Canada, the University of Maryland, and the smoke
alarm manufacturers to guide this effort. In 2004, NIST reported the results of those small- and real-scale tests of residential
smoke alarms. The measurements of temperature, smoke obscuration, and gas concentrations provided both insight into the
functioning of the devices and a set of reference data from fires of current materials for evaluating future enhancements to
alarm technology. This study also established that the times available for escape were far shorter than those from the 1970s.
By 2008, the Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) UL 217/268 Standards Technical Panel had formed a task group to discuss
new fire tests and standards for the next generation of fire sensing.

NIST then conducted further research on smoke alarm response to flaming and smoldering upholstered chair fires, including the
creation of a severe (cooked to well-done) and repeatable cooking activity representative of cooking nuisance sources. NIST also
modeled the smoke concentrations at the ceiling (where smoke alarms are typically located) at the time when the smoke levels
at head height were still low enough for occupants to escape. This would guide setting alarm activations to improve the odds of
escape. The UL Panel used these data to arrive at three new room-scale tests to measure the sensitivity of a new generation of
smoke alarm designs:

• Flaming of a flexible polyurethane foam (FPUF) used in furnishings,

• Smoldering of the same FPUF, and
• Broiling of two frozen hamburgers – a nuisance source.

The first two tests each include a low smoke concentration above which a device must alarm. These values took advantage of
the UL finding that the optical properties of FPUF smoke differed from those of the cotton and heptane pool used in the original
acceptance testing of smoke alarms. The third test included a smoke concentration below which the device must not alarm.
NIST’s role as an unbiased source of research was instrumental in gaining approval of the changes.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 32

The result is a new set of performance-based requirements for ANSI/UL 217 and ANSI/UL 268 that are technology-independent
and increase the time available for escape while enabling innovation in smoke alarm design. It is up to the manufacturers to
devise how to meet the requirements in the new standard.

Finally, NIST assessed whether the new performance tests would demonstrably enhance smoke alarm performance compared
to the currently available smoke alarms and whether the single nuisance source test is representative of a range of cooking
nuisance scenarios. The smoke alarm models tested were from seven manufacturers and included both single-sensor and dual-
sensor devices. None of the tested models would likely meet the FPUF test performance levels required in the updated ANSI/UL
217-2015. The broiling hamburgers test was considered to be a conservative test since it also challenged the majority of alarm
models.

The 8th edition of ANSI/UL 217, which includes these new fire tests and acceptance criteria, was issued in October 2015, and
the 7th edition of ANSI/UL 268 with the same suite of tests and acceptance criteria was approved and issued in January 2016.
As of June 30, 2024, all new alarms and detectors must meet the new Standards.

Expectations for the new generation of residential smoke alarms are high since the certification requirements are based on
solid science and verified in real-scale tests. Reductions in fire fatalities will be realized as building and fire codes cite the new
standards, jurisdictions adopt the updated new codes, and consumers replace their old devices.

Additional Reading:
• McGree T. 2024. Smoke Alarms in U.S. Home Fires. Quincy MA. National Fire Protection Association.
https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/research/nfpa-research/fire-statistical-reports/smoke-alarms-in-us-
home-fires.
• Bukowski RW, Peacock R, Averill JD, Cleary TG, Bryner NP, Walton WD, Reneke PA, and Kuligowski ED. 2007.
“Performance of Home Smoke Alarms, Analysis of the Response of Several Available Technologies in Residential Fire
Settings.” NIST Technical Note 1455-1. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/TN/nbstechnicalnote1455-1r2007.pdf.
• Cleary TG, 2010. “An Analysis of the Performance of Smoke Alarms,” Fire Safety Science 10:823-836.
https://doi.org/10.3801/IAFSS.FSS.10-823.
• Cleary TG and Chernovsky A. 2013. “Smoke Alarm Performance in Kitchen Fires and Nuisance Alarm Scenarios.” NIST
Technical Note 1784. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
https://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.1784.
• Cleary TG. 2014, “Performance of Dual Photoelectric/Ionization Smoke Alarms in Full-Scale Fire Tests.” Fire Technology
50(3): 753-773. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-010-0147-z.
• Cleary TG. 2014., “Improving Smoke Alarm Performance – Justification for New Smoldering and Flaming Test
Performance Criteria.” NIST Technical Note 1837. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
https://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.1837.
• ANSI/UL 217, Safety Standard for Single- and Multiple-Station Smoke Detectors. 2015. Northbrook IL. Underwriters
Laboratories, Inc. Latest version: 2025.
• Cleary TG. 2016. “A Study on the Performance of Current Smoke Alarms to the New Fire and Nuisance Tests Prescribed
in ANSI/UL 217-2015.” NIST Technical Note 1947. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
https://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.1947.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 33

WILDLAND-URBAN INTERFACE
FIRE LOSS MITIGATION
For millions of years, wildfires have been a natural and beneficial part of
ecosystems. However, as the global human population has grown, so has NIST has been a leader in
the number of dwellings at the wildland-urban interface (WUI), which are
areas where human development meets natural, undeveloped, terrain.
researching fires at the
Over the past 30 years, the spread of wildfires into built environments wildland-urban interface,
has escalated rapidly, leading to significant losses of property and lives. consistently translating this
About one-third of housing units and more than 60,000 communities in
the United States are currently at risk from WUI fires. Each year, these
knowledge into actionable
fires destroy thousands of structures and claim dozens of lives, with solutions through the
annual costs estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. development of measurement
To gain reliable technical knowledge on the destructive nature of WUI tools, code guidance, and best
fires, NIST invests in extensive fact-finding visits to post-fire sites. These
practices.
efforts enable NIST to reconstruct events and gain insights that clarify
how the fires unfold and thus understand how we might reduce WUI fire losses. NIST focuses on three key aspects of WUI fires:
fire spread to and between buildings, protection of structures, and community-level planning efforts to protect against fire
spread.

Fire Spread to and Between Buildings Fire spreads through the WUI via radiation, convection, and firebrands. NIST has applied
its Fire Dynamics Simulator (See Page 20) to predict complex wildfire movement into contiguous fuel by radiant heat from
flames and convection from hot fire gases. Fire radiation can ignite structures up to 100 m (300 ft) away. These simulations
have also helped with planning intentionally set, hectare-size burns tp learn about WUI fire spread.

Firebrands, also called embers, are small pieces of burning material emitted by flaming trees and wooden structures. They are a
major but previously overlooked factor in WUI fire spread. When carried aloft on wind currents, they can land on structures and
create new fires several kilometers or miles ahead of the main fire.

NIST has led studies to further understanding of firebrands and their

behaviors. NIST staff created the NIST Firebrand Generator, also
known as the "NIST Dragon." This device simulates wind-driven
bombardment by firebrand showers. The NIST Dragon is the basis for
the international standard ISO 6021, allowing labs worldwide to
collect and share self-consistent data on firebrand behavior. NIST also
created the "Emberometer" to measure firebrands in flight.

Protection of Structures Buildings are at risk from both fire and

embers. NIST staff have studied how combustibles near a building,
like landscaping, fences, and sheds as well as buildings themselves,
NIST Dragon generating an ember shower. (Credit: NIST) can catch fire from flames and firebrands. Working with partners,

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 34

NIST develops guidelines for protecting these combustible items, approaches to property maintenance, and recommendations
for building codes to make homes in wildfire-prone areas more fire-resistant.

NIST found that embers can enter buildings through air vents and ignite materials inside. To study this, they worked with
Japan's Building Research Institute, using the NIST Dragon to shower firebrands on a building inside a wind tunnel. Different
vent grates were tested, and NIST staff found that firebrands stuck in the vent and burned until they fit through holes, including
those less than 1 mm (0.04 in.). NIST continues to work with partners to create guidance on how to quantify these hazards.

Community Protection Fire behaves differently from other disasters. In the WUI, fires can spread rapidly through vegetation and
structures. Since ample combustibles are stored within the community, even a small vulnerability to fire or embers can lead to
the ignition and destruction of structures. This necessitates thorough hardening of both communities and individual buildings.

To address this, NIST, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), and the Insurance Institute for
Business & Home Safety (IBHS) developed the Hazard Mitigation Methodology (HMM). This science-based approach is built on
data from post-fire observations, field analysis, and lab research. It considers factors like building separation and parcel layouts,
showing how both community and structure hardening are essential for fire protection. CAL FIRE is using the HMM to retrofit six
communities, an example that influences consideration by state and national codes. The United States Fire Administration
(USFA) and NIST are working to make HMM part of the National Fire-Adapted Communities strategy. The International Code
Council is also planning to include HMM principles in the next edition of the International Wildland-Urban Interface Code.

The ESCAPE methodology, which was issued by NIST in 2023 based on data from post-fire observations, focuses on evacuating
small and intermediate WUI communities, including sheltering when there's not enough time to evacuate fully. ESCAPE is the
only national WUI evacuation guide and is already being used by 30 California communities.

Additional Reading:
• Crowley C, Miller A, Richardson R, and Malcom J. 2023. “Increasing Damages from Wildfires Warrant Investment in
Wildland Fire Management.” Washington DC. U.S. Department of the Interior Office of Policy Analysis.
https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/ppa-report-wildland-fire-econ-review-2023-05-25.pdf.
• Rehm RG and Mell W. 2009. “A Simple Model for Wind Effects of Burning Structures and Topography on Wildland–
urban Interface Surface-fire Propagation.” International Journal of Wildland Fire 18(3) 290-301.
https://doi.org/10.1071/WF08087.
• Manzello SL, Suzuki S, Gollner MJ, and Fernandez-Pello AA. 2020. Role of Firebrand Combustion in Large Outdoor Fire
Spread. Progress in Energy and Combustion Science 76(1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pecs.2019.100801.
• ISO 6021.2024. Firebrand Generator. Geneva. International Standards Organization.
• Maranghides A, Link ED, Mell WR, Hawks S, McDougald J, Quarles SL, Gorham DJ, and Nazare S. 2022. “WUI
Structure/Parcel/Community Fire Hazard Mitigation Methodology.” NIST TN 2205. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute
of Standards and Technology. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.2205
• Maranghides A and Link ED. 2024. “WUI Fire Evacuation and Sheltering Considerations: Assessment, Planning and
Execution: ESCAPE.” Presentation to the California Building Industry Association. https://cbia.org/wp-
content/uploads/2024/04/Evacuation-Scenario-Considerations-Assessment-Planning-and-Execution-CBIA.pdf.
• “NIST’s Emberometer Could Gauge Threat of Wildfire-Spreading Embers.” August 18, 2021.
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2021/08/nists-emberometer-could-gauge-threat-wildfire-spreading-embers.

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FIRE BEHAVIOR OF BUILDING
CONSTRUCTION
A central objective of fire engineering is the prevention of structural
collapse during uncontrolled fires. Room-scale testing at NIST in the early NIST researchers have
20th century established a standard temperature-time exposure and fire gathered data from large-scale
endurance ratings for individual building construction elements. These
tests on new building systems
ratings are central to building codes. Structural engineers have since
found that properly designed composites of construction elements can exposed to real fires.
achieve great stability, often at lower cost. Verification of enhanced Understanding how fire
performance has enabled the use of innovative building designs and
weakens structures and
materials. Accordingly, over the past century, the experimental facility for
making such measurements has been expanded at NIST from the
causes them to fail is helping
modest single compartment of the 1910s to the current multi-floor, multi- make buildings stronger and
room National Fire Research Laboratory (NFRL). safer during severe fires,
Completed in 2015, the NFRL allows researchers to conduct large fire giving people more time to
experiments with well-characterized measurement of heat release rate
while simultaneously applying mechanical loading (horizontal and vertical
escape.
forces) to a structure. By testing entire structural systems, the effects of nearby parts of the building on the heated part and
complex connection behaviors, like that between columns and girders, are included. Rather than studying fire endurance ratings
resulting from standard fire temperature-time exposure, structural systems can be pushed to the point of failure and through
controlled collapse during realistic fires. This allows engineers to understand how close the point of collapse can be safely
approached and how collapse will progress if the building is stressed beyond its structural design limits. This leads to more
resilient and economical building design.

The following three examples show how research conducted in the NFRL has contributed to the advancement of building codes
and our understanding of structural performance in fire.

In 2017, NIST staff, in collaboration with the National Research

Council Canada (NRCC) and the National Fire Protection Association
(NFPA) Fire Protection Research Foundation (FPRF), conducted large-
scale experiments to study the impact of fires on Cross-Laminated
Timber (CLT). CLT is glued layers of lumber with the grain of each layer
at a right angle to its neighbors. CLT can enable faster and more
sustainable construction. Concerns about fire growth and insufficient
data on structural integrity hindered building code revisions allowing
the use of CLT in buildings over six stories. These experiments helped
establish the amount of CLT that can be safely exposed under various
conditions, leading to an addition to the ANSI/APA PRG 320 standard
Construction of a CLT structure in the NFRL. (Credit: NIST) and facilitated changes to the International Building Code to expand
CLT use in North America.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 36

In the aftermath of a strong earthquake, fires are often ignited
due to damaged infrastructure or building contents,
compounding the original hazard. In 2019, NIST examined the
resistance to the horizontal force of steel wall construction
under combined simulated earthquake and realistic fire
conditions. The results provide guidance for the design of walls
when significant lateral deformation is expected, to promote
structural stability in the case of fire following earthquakes.

Culminating in 2022, NIST’s multiyear study examined how

steel-concrete composite floor systems in steel-framed
buildings react to fire and what causes them to fail. From tests Result of a test of a steel wall under earthquake and fire
conditions. (Credit: NIST)
of a full-scale, two-story steel frame with realistic connections
and slabs, the research confirmed that steel reinforcement in
the concrete is crucial for maintaining the integrity of composite
floors under fire conditions. However, the minimum amount of
steel reinforcement required by United States standards for
ambient conditions may not be enough to keep the slab intact
during a structurally significant fire. These experimental results
are currently used for validation of high-fidelity numerical
models to perform parametric studies and develop engineered
design solutions, a necessary step in the performance-based
design (AISC 360 Appendix 4, ASCE 7 Appendix E and ASCE
Manual of Practice 138) of steel framed buildings subjected to
Construction of a steel-concrete composite floor for fire
fire. These results also provide insight into the fire performance testing in the NFRL. (Credit: NIST)
and residual strength of a prescriptive code compliant floor
assembly meeting the requirements of ASTM E119 and UL 263.

Additional Reading:
• Bundy M, Hamins A, Gross J, Grosshandler W, and Choe L. 2016. “Structural Fire Experimental Capabilities at the NIST
National Fire Research Laboratory.” Fire Technology 52:959–966. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-015-0544-4.
• Su J, Lafrance P-S, Hoehler MS, and Bundy MF. 2018. “Fire Safety Challenges of Tall Wood Buildings – Phase 2: Task 2
& 3 – Cross Laminated Timber Compartment Fire Tests,” FPRF-2018-01. Quincy MA. Fire Protection Research
Foundation. https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2018/02/14/task_2_3_report_-
_clt_compartment_fire_tests.pdf.
• ANSI/APA PRG 320-2018. 2018. “Standard for Performance-Rated Cross-Laminated Timber.” Tacoma WA. APA – The
Engineered Wood Association. https://www.apawood.org/ansi-apa-prg-320.
• Hoehler MS, Andres B, and Bundy MF. 2019. “Influence of Fire on the Lateral Resistance of Cold-Formed Steel Shear
Walls – Phase 2: Oriented Strand Board, Strap Braced, and Gypsum-Sheet Steel Composite.” NIST Technical Note
2038. Gaithersburg MD. National Institute of Standards and Technology. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.2038.
• NIST News. 2020. “How Fire Causes Office-Building Floors to Collapse.” https://www.nist.gov/news-
events/news/2020/03/how-fire-causes-office-building-floors-collapse.

A Legacy of Fire Safety | 37