The City Of Columbia Southern Garden Apartment Fire South Florida - Dec

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Feb 20, 2024

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1 The City Of Columbia Southern Garden Apartment Fire South Florida Robert Kinyon Columbia Southern University FIR 2303 Fire Behavior and Combustion John Rhoades January 10, 2024

2 The City Of Columbia Southern Garden Apartment Fire South Florida On June 21 st at 8:30 AM multiple calls were made to 9-1-1 reporting heavy smoke coming from the Garden apartment complex. One caller was a resident reporting that there was smoke entering into her apartment. As 9-1-1 was receiving the call from the apartment resident a Traffic News reporter who was stuck in traffic during his commute to work saw smoke billowing from the Columbia Southern Garden apartments located at 4414 Mayes Street West in South Florida and started to film and report the fire on the news. Multiple 9-1-1 calls started coming in reporting heavy thick black smoke and fire conditions visible at the apartment complex. The apartment complex comprises a total of 210 apartments, which are divided into either two- bedroom or three-bedroom configurations and are distributed across five distinct structures. The apartment complex was built in 1963 as a two-story low-rise building with a flat roof and no attic space. In 1990, an additional level was constructed above the original building. The new floor was built using lightweight walls and a gable-style roof made of lightweight wood trusses. The fire originated on the second-floor apartment 2B in the kitchen due to an unattended grease pan left on the stove while the occupant of the unit was in a neighboring unit. This resulted in a multi alarm multi resident structure fire with heavy fire load and adjacent exposures. There are several mitigating factors that contributed to the extent of this multi alarm fire that I will elaborate on in further detail. According to the given scenario, the fire progressed through four distinct stages. As described in the textbook, these four stages are, fire initiation, fire spread, fire ventilation, and fire termination. During the initial phase of fire initiation, "smoldering is considered the most common initial stage of combustion in fires that lead to injury or death". (Gann &

3 Friedman, 2014, page 83). In this specific scenario, the fire originated in the kitchen, namely from oil that was present in a pan on the stove. As a grease fire, it did not smolder; rather, it ignited immediately "directly as flaming". (Gann & Friedman, 2014, page 83). Smoldering is limited to porous materials, whereas the oil in the pan began to undergo chemical decomposition and gasify. The term used to describe this process is pyrolysis. Pyrolysis, as defined in the textbook, "the anaerobic or oxidative decomposition of a gas, liquid, or solid into other molecules when heated." (Gann & Friedman, 2014, page 93). During the situation, the unattended oil in the pan underwent conduction and gradually increased in temperature until it reached its ignite threshold. As the gases resulting from the process of oil pyrolysis combined with the molecules present in the air and adhered to nearby surfaces, this led to their own pyrolysis, initiating the subsequent phase of fire spread. Per the textbook “a portion of the heat produced by a burning item is transferred, by radiation, conduction, or convection, to an unburnt part of the item or to a nearby combustible that is not yet burning." (Gann & Friedman, 2014, page 84). The grease fire emitted radiant heat, which elevated the temperature in the vicinity and resulted in pyrolysis, transferring the effects of the hot grease fire to the unburnt portions of the apartment. This resulted in the surrounding flammable materials reaching their ignition temperature, leading to the further fire spread. During this ongoing process, the fire will progressively transfer from a high-temperature area to a significantly lower- temperature area until it completely consumes all the available fuel and oxygen. After depleting all the available oxygen and combustible materials in the vicinity, the fire began to starve itself. This stage of the fire known as fire ventilation can become a dangerous situation for firefighters if not properly recognized. Given the circumstances, it is highly probable that in this scenario the initial first arriving engine crew was unaware of the prevailing conditions at that moment. By

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