From what I know, sprinklers aren't really meant to extinguish the building if it were on fire. Their purpose is mainly to suppress the fire enough so that the occupants inside the building have more time to evacuate. Again, there will be times that the fire will be small enough for the system to put it out, which is the best case scenario.
Modern water mist sprinklers actually do a good job of extinguishing fires, at least from controlled videos I've seen with comparisons to traditional water sprinklers, and also use a lot less water, meaning they can operate under lower pressure and thus power conditions.
@@AndrooUK Actually, water-mist sprinklers need HIGHER pressure to work, and are usually hooked up with some sort of high-pressure plunger pump just like what you'd use while washing a car.
Sprinklers are intended to 1: allow people time and a safe path to evacuate, and 2: contain the fire in a small area until the fire department arrives. If this works right, the damage should be confined to a small area, rather than spreading to the entire building.
Unlike on TV and movies, only those sprinklers affected by the heat of fire are activated. Not every sprinkler activates when one does. The water pressure behind the head is at least 150psi, in commercial buildings, creating a fine spray instead of a drenching rain. It's not about washing the fire out, but cooling the fire to below the point of ignition. Firefighters often spray the ceiling of a room first, which creates steam and removes heat from the fire, before aiming at the base of the flames. The fact that the fire started in a light fixture, means that the fog of water more than likely extinguished that fire, also. But, the heat of that fire probably burned into the celling or roof before the sprinklers activated.
Failed fluorescent ballast. Glad we have LEDS now. In case many are wondering why the ballast did not trip the thermal protector when too hot, you are correct, for many years all fluorescent ballast even the magnetic type, was typically marked "Class P " to indicate it has a thermal protector which designed to shut off if something caused the ballast to overheat, however, there are some very old ballasts which do not have any protection, still in service, and those can be very dangerous, and should be replaced with a ballast that is marked class P at a minimum. Better yet, gut the ballast entirely and install type B LED tube, which connects directly to the mains voltage, they now even make an 8 footer LED to replace an 8 foot fluorescent.
Multiple LEDs in a confined tube or bulb, especially if poorly made and/or using crappy components and materials, can 'pop' or 'explode' the cover, and/or have extreme temperatures, and melt cheap plastic and/or cause fires of their own. LEDs are great, but aren't the be all and end all of fire safety.
Thermal protection (Class P) ballasts were introduced in 1969 so if a home was built before or a few years after that date it would be a good idea to check and replace any ballasts that are not class P.
Don't think it all LED bulbs are safe cuz they're not they have a tiny resistor inside them can cause a fire especially the ones that has backup battery lithium batteries explode when they get hot have already had that to happen in my shed the shed was gone with matter minutes lithium splatters fire out like bomb. And most led lights this rarely happens but it can't happen get hot back at the base where it screws in there really not supposed to be in any enclosed light fixture can over heat if you touch the base of ballb were thay screws in and iff it burns your fingers get rid of it or to make sure it's got plenty of ventilation around it.
More likely it was the oil filled power factor correction capacitor that failed. In newer fixtures it is an X2 rated film capacitor, which should be safe (in theory).
You should always wherever possible close doors to every room. It slows down the fire/smoke. Fire needs three things to burn, oxygen, fuel and heat. Get rid of any one of those and you don’t have a fire.
@Baby Blue Eyes I used to clean a large bank and after I got done cleaning each room, I would shut the door . I assume the previous cleaning company did not do that because they asked me why I shut all the doors when I’m done cleaning and I told them the very same thing you said that in case of fire, it would help slow down the spread of the fire tremendously . Needless to say after I told them that they never questioned me about closing the doors again and they actually agreed with me that it was a good idea. I just wonder why did it take somebody like me to tell them this. I’ve always been taught and thought that this was a common practice but apparently it’s not with everybody .
@@jayasmrmore3687 It really isn't. The system is not meant to go off at any small fire, otherwise you get huge amount of waterdamage instead. Let's say someone was there, it's way better for them to handle it with an extinguisher, than to have this thing stray all over the place. Don't use anti air missiles to shoot ducks.
Keyholder responding to alarm system? Either 15m travel time from beginning, or 3m from start of water flow (a seperate trigger, but part of fire alarm system)
Light balast cought fire. The hot burning tar drips down on whatever it touches,catching everything else on fire. I had that happen at the old school I worked in. Lucky we just came off lunch break,walked out of the custodial office just in time to witness hot burning tar dripping out of the light fixture. It stunk up the place and I had to shut the breakers off and replace the balast. The actual fixture was ok.
Close, but actually that's a tube with wires inside of it most likely for ovens and the wires shorted out and turned red hot causing the tubing to heat up enough to catch fire and begin to drip. Just plastic not tire. This isn't the 19th century
RC Hobbyist Extreme I had the same problem with a ballast except no fire and the ballast is still being used today (it’s my house we do use that light a lot but we’re around most of the time when it’s on and it’s dropped tar onto the carpet but never caught fire
I recently watched Towering Inferno, a disaster movie where the disaster is an electrical fire in a 135 story building. The fire in the movie started similarly to this one, but the sprinklers didn't work for some reason. Now imagine how boring of a movie it would be if they did work
Right Nathan! In that movie, the wealthy influential building owner got the inspectors to allow him to open the building before all the safety systems were online, and the electrical contractor had cut corners to make more money by using undersized wiring. So, no sprinklers and overheated electrical gear. I always wondered, why didn't they manually open the sprinkler valves to slow the fire down? ([ then there'd be a movie that was less than 30 minutes!]) (The rule is: "Any water- any where- = less fire- some where.") Just a technical note: The box that blew open and started the fire? Made by a company called "Square D", they are the best in the business, it has an interlock that won't allow the handle to be moved to the "ON" position unless the cover is closed. Once the handle has been moved to the "ON" position, the cover locks shut. The scenario presented in the movie therefore is impossible! Of course, that 400 amp switch can handle surges of 20,000 amps and there'd be a breaker in the main electrical room that would cut it at 400, so another impossible situation. Great movie! Made a lot of people think; What If?"
no the fire deparment is notified when the pressure switch on the valve set is activated with a avg 45 - 60 second delay to the alarm which give people 60 seconds to cancel it when you are testing the pressure switch.. so my point is. the sprinklers go of before any fire brigade is notified. there could be smoke alarms that go off. before sprinklers tho but its not guaranteed.
Older florescent fixtures use an oil ballast cooler- When they start to fail, you will smell a burning electrical smell... If it continues and is not noticed or taken care of, you can get that "cooling oil" to reach its ignition temp and boom- fixture failure. Surprised the breakers didn't shut down power though...
Most shorts in ballasts are low current arcs which isn't enough to trip the breaker especially if the short is in the secondary winding and the thermal cutout protectors don't always work.
I'm a scrapper - chilled me to the bone to find one of those burned-up ballasts casually tossed into community trash by maintenance. _Which one of us nearly had a fire take down our building???_
I had the same thing happen. We just moved into our house. We smelled smoke from the basement. Fortunately, it blew a 30 amp fuse and that stopped it. There was no fire but there was a lot of red hot tar on the concrete floor. I cut the wires to the ballast and cooled it off in a bucket of water. How lucky we were! This was before the days of cell phones and home smoke detectors. Our landline phone was not yet connected and our new neighbors were away for the weekend. We stayed up all night to make sure the ceiling did not ignite from the heat as we ventilated the house out. What a memory from our first night in our first house!
Hopefully you got rid of the 30 amp fuses too! In a house, there shouldn't have been a 30 am fuse for anything but a dryer or water heater, but you know how it goes: 15 amp fuse blew, put in a 20. 20 blows put in a 30. 30 blows...put in a penny! (Seriously- DON'T do that!!)
John In Milford , Yes you are right. That circuit had 14 gauge copper wire, which should only have been trusted with a 15 amp fuse. Turned out that all circuits were incorrectly fused the same way! So our first project was to go trace the wiring all throughout the house (two story, attic, basement, and garage). It looked like the Three Stooges had previously done the job. It was a miracle the house didn’t burn to the ground earlier. So we ended up replacing the fuse box with a modern circuit breaker panel, replacing every bit of rotting cable in the house, while making sure that all circuits were logically placed, and properly protected with the correctly sized circuit breakers. While we were at it, we replaced all outlets with the proper three pronged sizes, and installed new switches and fixtures. Somehow, you cannot put a price tag on the resulting “piece of mind.” Just glad to be alive!
@@jeromewysocki8809 finally, someone with some intelligence! TOO many people would have put a new 30 amp fuse back in and gone on with life. Until the house burned down. I am sure that it was expensive, but breakers are always better than fuses.
David H , my mother in law criticized me for having re-wired my house after what I described, above. I guess she thought I was stupid, and reacted with an over kill solution. She said "No one else has that problem." My friend at the local fire dept. told me otherwise. Most people are unaware of the number of electrical fires in old houses, caused by bad wiring. That's because by the time a fire investigation is done, it is rarely reported in the news. The smoke in my basement that evening was every bit as thick as you see in this video. Glad I'm alive to warn other people about these dangers!
You can see now why fire sprinkler are considered a "Measure A" smoke control. Before activation the smoke is moving out of the fire area. After activation the cooling effect of the water draws the heated smoke and gasses back into the fire area protecting the rest of the occupants from the harmful smoke.
well here we sit and there is the fire, and over there is the extinguisher. and over there is the fire an right there is the extinguisher. SO frustrating......
UniquelyDezined - Artist Kathy Coulson Prough Woman in the door way? Oh, silly me, I thought that it was a fire fighter since they're wearing fire fighting gear.
So it took the FD 7.5 minutes to arrive from the time of the water-fall alarm which started around 12:30. If the building had monitored smoke detectors, FD would have been there before sprinkler activation, saving all of that water damage!
Doubtful. By the time a smoke detector activates in a commercial building, notifies the alarm monitoring company, they either call the building or the fire department, the fire department responds, finds the Knox-Box and discovers that there isn't a current key and have to break in... Would have been nice to show the 'rest of the video' instead of a few frames showing what happened next.
Ethan Lamoureux : Yah, I had to run it slo-mo to see it, my 'puter was kicking to the next video at that point. My previous has been corrected, thanks.
the idea is that if a fire gets bigger it will probably consume the whole building and could potentially kill someone... the water from a sprinkler will damage a small portion of the building and it's unlikely to kill someone... so....
Without the sprinklers, the fire would have grown much larger by the time the fire department arrives. Larger fire means more water required to extinguish the fire, thus more water damage. Sprinklers save lives by slowing the spread of fire (in some cases even extinguishing it completely), and also reduce property damage due to fire, smoke, and water. Think about it, how much water do you think comes out of a fire hose compared to a single sprinkler head? Hint: A LOT. Sprinklers are always better than no sprinklers.
They are already available. Simplex I believe makes it. I forget the other company that I have seen, i think it might have been Ademco. It's being used in very large buildings. There are also 2 things being used that most people never see or hear about: "Beam Detectors" This shoots a laser across large distances and if the beam dims at the opposite end, it activates. This can be used uner canopies outdoors where a conventional detector cannot be used. I have seen them at some home improvement stores' garden areas. They have to set a bit of a dely on tem in that application to deal with the birds! "Tube Detectors" Long runs of PEX tubing that has holes drilled everyplace you need detection, or at code required intervals. These are sometimes seen in Hotel's corridors where a drill hole is at every single door. There might be 50 or more detection holes on a run, imagine the cost of 5 individual smoke detectors! The pipe goes to a single detection device that uses a sort of pump to pull a sample continually.
Ugh, I bet that was the STANKEST fire!! Overheating/melting pitch is the WORST smell!! As a teenager, I had a bedroom in the basement of my family home. Our basement had drop ceilings and fluorescent lights everywhere but the laundry room and the storage room-my bedroom included. I can still remember the god-awful, cloying, absolutely NAUSEATING stink when one of the ballasts in those lights started to go bad. Fortunately, my sperm donor, who was actually a good dad when I was a kid, always replaced the ballasts and fixed things, before it did anything but stink. But MAN, that stink. You could almost taste it, and it seemed like it hung around FOREVER. I didn't even want to sleep in my bedroom when it smelled like that! And with this fire, you have not only that, but the melted plastic of the wet floor sign, plus whatever else was burning in that janitor's closet. It must have been SO bad. Blegh. Glad we don't have smell-o-vision, lol. Also glad the fire didn't get too out of hand.
How ironic...the fire extinguisher arrow is right there and no one present to use it. Apparently camera's are worthless for fires. Perhaps smoke detection would be a better option connected to a home security system with monitoring to alert fire dept. So much of what we consume comes from the orient with no U.L. listings...we have become so vulnerable. Even meat inspection requirements have now been lifted so we might be eating horse meat being sold as beef. I know, I know...how does this have anything to do with this fire?....it's a general theme that endangers all our safety.
Should have smoke detectors. Modern optical sensors would have activated the fire alarm before you can see the fire. Everybody would be out Before the building is full of toxic smoke...
Computergk91 Gaming I install them, just to let you know it's 155 not 153 lol. Plus they make sprinklers that go off at lower and higher temperatures you can tell what temp it will go off by looking that the bulb color
I wonder what was burning, was it ironically a emergency exit sign/light with battery failure? it seems to be molten plastic so I don't think it was a light fixture like in the hallway. I guess it could be large PVC conduit with conductors melting and dripping. would be great if they posted their findings :)
Sprinklers are good. But they continue to flow well after the fire is extinguished. It takes time to shut the water off and even there is residual water in the pipe that will continue to pour out until there is none left to drip out. That being said they still are good idea We had sprinkler wedges we made to force into the sprinkler head to slow the flow of water down to a level that was controllable.
People should look up how sprinkler systems work, like what causes them to activate before they post something like "why didnt they go off earlier with all that smoke" There are several different kinds btw. And also look up how you "turn them off" If your curious about those things, a little self-education never killed anyone. And then people are like "the water did more damage than the fire" Yea, because it did what its designed to do... Put the small fire out before it did a lot of damage.
@@donnawensley2178 Yep. Heat melts a wax seal or breaks a piece of glass inside the sprinkler head. To turn it off, either the tank runs out of water, you shut the water to the building off or you use wedges to plug it up. Some buildings have a valve room where you can find the valve and turn it off.
+spokanefire Very nice video showing the effectiveness of sprinklers! I'm curious - was the alarm transmitted by a smoke detector wired into an alarm system or monitored by a security service, or when the sprinkler started flowing did it automatically send the alarm, or was it called in by a passerby? Thanks!
Almost all sprinklers ain't the deluge system like you see in the movies. Almost all of them have a glass bulb filled with a liquid. As the liquid is heated up, pressure rise inside the bulb and eventually cause it to break. That bulb press against a plug, which block the water hole. By breaking it release the plug, which let water out. This prevent unnessary flooding. Also, contrary to popular belief, a sprinkler system is NOT to extinguish a fire. It may be able to, but the main purpose is to prevent the fire from spreading and limiting the fire damage. A fun fact is that some system are actually filled with air. This prevent the water from freezing inside the pipe and causing the pipe to break. A small compressor will maintain some air pressure inside the system. It limit the speed at which it can put air in. The reason is that there might be some tiny leaks, so you want to be able to keep the system pressurised, without overcomming the sprinkler head. There is a special water valve that isolate the inside system from the city water pressure. The way it work is that due to the construction the air will force it to stay closed with quite less pressure, about 1/5 of the city water pressure is required to keep it closed. If the city pressure is 60psi, they need like 12psi of air to keep it closed. They will of course put a bit more for safety. When the sprinkler head open, the air leak out, the air pressure drop, the valve open and the city water can now flow, and the system is now at 40-60psi. Soon after, an optional booster pump can kick in and pressurise the system to like 150psi. So you get fire, heat cause the bulb to break, plug fall, air rush out, valve open, city water flow, pump kick in, even more water flow. All of the other sprinklers head will NOT open, unless they get too hot too, then the bulb of them break... Take note that there is some sensors on the system that detect when it got activated, and usually when there is a fault, can be any or all or none of: low air pressure, low city water pressure, high air pressure (that would cause a delay in the water), high water pressure (can cause the valve to open) and more.
thephantom1492 i do not understand this rambling. He asked about the fire alarm, not how a sprinkler system works. As for the alarm. It seems from the response time of the fire department compared to the time the sprinklers went off that the flow\tamper switch on the fire riser sent the alarm in. If there were a monitored fire alarm the fire dept probably would have been there sooner as the smoke would have set off the smoke detectors in the A\C units.
Most, if not all legal sprinkler systems are remotely monitored. They are also generally wired through a local fire alarm. If not actively monitored, water could flow for days or weeks if the building is unoccupied when a sprinkler opened.
I worked for a county running their telephone system. One day I got a phone call that a department needed a replacement phone because someone left a desk fan on overnight and it caused a small fire, and the sprinkler system doused the phone. The department was the county fire marshall!
For the two years when i worked as an assistant Kitchen Manager, i am glad this never happened in my building.....i would not have wanted to have that talk with the owners
That looks like the breaker box overheating and must’ve been overloaded, that’ll cause it to burst into flames. There’s a mop bucket in the closet, so I am guessing that is the housekeeping closet, that’s where the breaker box is at my work.
The only thing that would have decreased property damage would be if the 2 doors were closed. Would have heated up quicker and put the fire out almost instantly with little smoke travel. FIRE SPRINKLERS SAVE LIVES--and property too!
how much of it was damaged?? And was it able to reopen after a quick fix? And why didn't the power shut its self down? Isn't that the job of the power box to trigger it to shut down when something like that happens??? Glade no one was there and no one got hurt. And I am glade that you didn't lose the whole building.
John Rickard Thermal fuses weren't used in much of anything years ago. Research GE Coffeemaker fires. No thermal fuse, a bad watertank seal and drip* drip* drip* on the timer- it would come on with no water and burn the house down. GE Sold the entire small appliance line to Black and Decker who completely redesigned them- adding 2 thermal fuses. You'll find them in everything now, right down to a can opener!
I discovered that aluminium wiring was used for the high-current circuits in my home built in the late 1960s. The dryer started acting strangely, so I inspected the outlet and found one pole had heated up & oxidized. I replaced the outlet and cut back the bad cable. I re-terminated it after sanding the exposed aluminum and using the required zinc-containing paste. No more trouble.
Did you use a proper CU/AL rated outlet? If not, then your replacement is illegal. But most outlets are dual rated, so it is probable that you are OK. You are fortunate there was enough excess wire that you could reterminate.
buggsy5 , you may want to do the same with all of your outlets, switches, and wire junctions in circuit boxes. Better still would be to replace all aluminum wiring. Many electrical fire fatalities happened before they figured out the problem you discovered here, yourself.
There is a fire still spreading on the ceiling I thought it was by law to have slow burning or fire resistant ceiling panels or slow burning fiberglass in the loft space specially in a business premises
ah dangit the ceiling is leaking fire again.
yep
OnTheRocks lmao
Hi
Hi
last time that happened to me I almost ran out of buckets.
From what I know, sprinklers aren't really meant to extinguish the building if it were on fire. Their purpose is mainly to suppress the fire enough so that the occupants inside the building have more time to evacuate. Again, there will be times that the fire will be small enough for the system to put it out, which is the best case scenario.
Modern water mist sprinklers actually do a good job of extinguishing fires, at least from controlled videos I've seen with comparisons to traditional water sprinklers, and also use a lot less water, meaning they can operate under lower pressure and thus power conditions.
@@AndrooUK Actually, water-mist sprinklers need HIGHER pressure to work, and are usually hooked up with some sort of high-pressure plunger pump just like what you'd use while washing a car.
Sprinklers are intended to 1: allow people time and a safe path to evacuate, and 2: contain the fire in a small area until the fire department arrives. If this works right, the damage should be confined to a small area, rather than spreading to the entire building.
If you're not out by the time the a sprinkler head pops you're in deep doo doo
Sprinklers excel mostly for fires contained inside rooms and not for structural fires
ironic fire extinguisher is right out of the frame.
ikr
HighAway Omg roflmfao! I was just pointing out the same thing!!!!!
Too bad nobody was around to use it...
It's within frame it's directly below whatever that metal fixture is.
Yakiraziah Baht Israel and directly below the metal thingy is out of frame....
Unlike on TV and movies, only those sprinklers affected by the heat of fire are activated. Not every sprinkler activates when one does. The water pressure behind the head is at least 150psi, in commercial buildings, creating a fine spray instead of a drenching rain. It's not about washing the fire out, but cooling the fire to below the point of ignition. Firefighters often spray the ceiling of a room first, which creates steam and removes heat from the fire, before aiming at the base of the flames. The fact that the fire started in a light fixture, means that the fog of water more than likely extinguished that fire, also. But, the heat of that fire probably burned into the celling or roof before the sprinklers activated.
Failed fluorescent ballast. Glad we have LEDS now. In case many are wondering why the ballast did not trip the thermal protector when too hot, you are correct, for many years all fluorescent ballast even the magnetic type, was typically marked "Class P " to indicate it has a thermal protector which designed to shut off if something caused the ballast to overheat, however, there are some very old ballasts which do not have any protection, still in service, and those can be very dangerous, and should be replaced with a ballast that is marked class P at a minimum. Better yet, gut the ballast entirely and install type B LED tube, which connects directly to the mains voltage, they now even make an 8 footer LED to replace an 8 foot fluorescent.
Multiple LEDs in a confined tube or bulb, especially if poorly made and/or using crappy components and materials, can 'pop' or 'explode' the cover, and/or have extreme temperatures, and melt cheap plastic and/or cause fires of their own.
LEDs are great, but aren't the be all and end all of fire safety.
Thermal protection (Class P) ballasts were introduced in 1969 so if a home was built before or a few years after that date it would be a good idea to check and replace any ballasts that are not class P.
Don't think it all LED bulbs are safe cuz they're not they have a tiny resistor inside them can cause a fire especially the ones that has backup battery lithium batteries explode when they get hot have already had that to happen in my shed the shed was gone with matter minutes lithium splatters fire out like bomb. And most led lights this rarely happens but it can't happen get hot back at the base where it screws in there really not supposed to be in any enclosed light fixture can over heat if you touch the base of ballb were thay screws in and iff it burns your fingers get rid of it or to make sure it's got plenty of ventilation around it.
There are also electronic ballasts that strike the tubes immediately and run more efficiently with much less heat wastage.
More likely it was the oil filled power factor correction capacitor that failed. In newer fixtures it is an X2 rated film capacitor, which should be safe (in theory).
You should always wherever possible close doors to every room. It slows down the fire/smoke. Fire needs three things to burn, oxygen, fuel and heat. Get rid of any one of those and you don’t have a fire.
CHANGED !!! Per NFPA,Int, now we keep doors OPEN (no joke) so we can hear detectors, especially in sleep.
@@Trojanny uh, no... there is no NFPA standard that says leave the doors open, especially doors that are fire rated.
@@Trojanny Code in my location requires that every bedroom have it's own alarm hardwired to all other alarms in the residence.
@Baby Blue Eyes
I used to clean a large bank and after I got done cleaning each room, I would shut the door .
I assume the previous cleaning company did not do that because they asked me why I shut all the doors when I’m done cleaning and I told them the very same thing you said that in case of fire, it would help slow down the spread of the fire tremendously .
Needless to say after I told them that they never questioned me about closing the doors again and they actually agreed with me that it was a good idea.
I just wonder why did it take somebody like me to tell them this.
I’ve always been taught and thought that this was a common practice but apparently it’s not with everybody .
Well, won't help if there is forced draft ventilation into each room... At least it will slow down the smoke a bit though...
Very cool. I've never seen a fire sprinkler go off. Amazingly effective.
How is it effective when it took 11 minutes to turn on
@@jayasmrmore3687 And that is a good thing.
@@kaspervestergaard2383 11 minutes is way too long in a fire.
@@jayasmrmore3687 It really isn't. The system is not meant to go off at any small fire, otherwise you get huge amount of waterdamage instead. Let's say someone was there, it's way better for them to handle it with an extinguisher, than to have this thing stray all over the place. Don't use anti air missiles to shoot ducks.
From the attire and surprised look at 16:54, I'd say this fire started after hours. Perhaps late at night or before opening in the morning.
Keyholder responding to alarm system? Either 15m travel time from beginning, or 3m from start of water flow (a seperate trigger, but part of fire alarm system)
Light balast cought fire. The hot burning tar drips down on whatever it touches,catching everything else on fire. I had that happen at the old school I worked in. Lucky we just came off lunch break,walked out of the custodial office just in time to witness hot burning tar dripping out of the light fixture. It stunk up the place and I had to shut the breakers off and replace the balast. The actual fixture was ok.
RC Hobbyist Extreme *Ballast*
VstaarProduction 15 Yup,that too!
Ballast that didn't have the metal protective cover in place is my guess.
Close, but actually that's a tube with wires inside of it most likely for ovens and the wires shorted out and turned red hot causing the tubing to heat up enough to catch fire and begin to drip.
Just plastic not tire. This isn't the 19th century
RC Hobbyist Extreme I had the same problem with a ballast except no fire and the ballast is still being used today (it’s my house we do use that light a lot but we’re around most of the time when it’s on and it’s dropped tar onto the carpet but never caught fire
12:25 is where the sprinklers kick in
Dom wpc thanks mate
: )
You spoiled it
Sorry en xD
Dude, thanks
I recently watched Towering Inferno, a disaster movie where the disaster is an electrical fire in a 135 story building. The fire in the movie started similarly to this one, but the sprinklers didn't work for some reason. Now imagine how boring of a movie it would be if they did work
Nathan Adam i love that movie
I suddenly want to watch that movie really bad now
that film is a blast from the past...gonna have to go watch that again now :)
Right Nathan! In that movie, the wealthy influential building owner got the inspectors to allow him to open the building before all the safety systems were online, and the electrical contractor had cut corners to make more money by using undersized wiring. So, no sprinklers and overheated electrical gear. I always wondered, why didn't they manually open the sprinkler valves to slow the fire down? ([ then there'd be a movie that was less than 30 minutes!]) (The rule is: "Any water- any where- = less fire- some where.")
Just a technical note: The box that blew open and started the fire? Made by a company called "Square D", they are the best in the business, it has an interlock that won't allow the handle to be moved to the "ON" position unless the cover is closed. Once the handle has been moved to the "ON" position, the cover locks shut. The scenario presented in the movie therefore is impossible! Of course, that 400 amp switch can handle surges of 20,000 amps and there'd be a breaker in the main electrical room that would cut it at 400, so another impossible situation. Great movie! Made a lot of people think; What If?"
John In Milford like the fire at trump tower a few weeks ago.No sprinkler system in the high rise.It may have been before sprinklers were required.
every small business needs fire alarms and sprinklers!
That’s a honest truth! My Grandfather was a firefighter and he would have told them to get a fire alarm 🚨 put in and sprinklers.
@@shannongreenwell1278 Just make sure it's not Gamewell.
Without the sprinkler system, the building would've been a total loss
Yeah but the fire alarm doesn't put the fire out, so it could have burnt out of control
morthren but the fire alarm in a building with fire sprinklers is monitored, the fire dept was probably notified before the sprinklers went off.
fire alarms dont stop fires..... the whole building could of easily been toast.
no the fire deparment is notified when the pressure switch on the valve set is activated with a avg 45 - 60 second delay to the alarm which give people 60 seconds to cancel it when you are testing the pressure switch.. so my point is. the sprinklers go of before any fire brigade is notified. there could be smoke alarms that go off. before sprinklers tho but its not guaranteed.
lee smith the sprinklers do stop fires
anyone else keep looking at the fire extinguisher sign???
I can kinda also see the fire extinguisher itself on the bottom right corner of the footage.
yeah iwas hoping a ghost would grab it and use it
You do realize this fire was caught on security surveillance
Nobody their use of anyways what's a fire extinguisher going to do with no person to use it
Nobody was at te place time of the fire.
Older florescent fixtures use an oil ballast cooler- When they start to fail, you will smell a burning electrical smell... If it continues and is not noticed or taken care of, you can get that "cooling oil" to reach its ignition temp and boom- fixture failure. Surprised the breakers didn't shut down power though...
Rick Delair yes that's my method as well I can recognize that smell
Tehehe 'Éssence of burning ballast'. I agree, once you get first hand experience of that smell, it is extremely distinctive and you know right away.
Most shorts in ballasts are low current arcs which isn't enough to trip the breaker especially if the short is in the secondary winding and the thermal cutout protectors don't always work.
I'm a scrapper - chilled me to the bone to find one of those burned-up ballasts casually tossed into community trash by maintenance.
_Which one of us nearly had a fire take down our building???_
@@Truckguy1970 Would the arc be enough to trip an arc fault breaker?
I had the same thing happen. We just moved into our house. We smelled smoke from the basement. Fortunately, it blew a 30 amp fuse and that stopped it.
There was no fire but there was a lot of red hot tar on the concrete floor. I cut the wires to the ballast and cooled it off in a bucket of water.
How lucky we were! This was before the days of cell phones and home smoke detectors. Our landline phone was not yet connected and our new neighbors were away for the weekend.
We stayed up all night to make sure the ceiling did not ignite from the heat as we ventilated the house out.
What a memory from our first night in our first house!
Hopefully you got rid of the 30 amp fuses too! In a house, there shouldn't have been a 30 am fuse for anything but a dryer or water heater, but you know how it goes: 15 amp fuse blew, put in a 20. 20 blows put in a 30. 30 blows...put in a penny! (Seriously- DON'T do that!!)
John In Milford , Yes you are right. That circuit had 14 gauge copper wire, which should only have been trusted with a 15 amp fuse. Turned out that all circuits were incorrectly fused the same way!
So our first project was to go trace the wiring all throughout the house (two story, attic, basement, and garage). It looked like the Three Stooges had previously done the job. It was a miracle the house didn’t burn to the ground earlier.
So we ended up replacing the fuse box with a modern circuit breaker panel, replacing every bit of rotting cable in the house, while making sure that all circuits were logically placed, and properly protected with the correctly sized circuit breakers.
While we were at it, we replaced all outlets with the proper three pronged sizes, and installed new switches and fixtures. Somehow, you cannot put a price tag on the resulting “piece of mind.” Just glad to be alive!
For sure! Now if everyone would have their electrical system checked once in a while, there'd be fewer lives lost.
@@jeromewysocki8809 finally, someone with some intelligence! TOO many people would have put a new 30 amp fuse back in and gone on with life.
Until the house burned down.
I am sure that it was expensive, but breakers are always better than fuses.
David H , my mother in law criticized me for having re-wired my house after what I described, above. I guess she thought I was stupid, and reacted with an over kill solution. She said "No one else has that problem." My friend at the local fire dept. told me otherwise. Most people are unaware of the number of electrical fires in old houses, caused by bad wiring. That's because by the time a fire investigation is done, it is rarely reported in the news. The smoke in my basement that evening was every bit as thick as you see in this video. Glad I'm alive to warn other people about these dangers!
If only it just dripped into the yellow mop bucket to the left.
Lol....now, that's humor..
I like that
You can see now why fire sprinkler are considered a "Measure A" smoke control. Before activation the smoke is moving out of the fire area. After activation the cooling effect of the water draws the heated smoke and gasses back into the fire area protecting the rest of the occupants from the harmful smoke.
I was amazed to watch that. Crazy how much smoke and air it pulled back in.
Fire starts at 0:38
Sprinkler activates at 12:25
When your a block under lava in Minecraft-
well here we sit and there is the fire, and over there is the extinguisher. and over there is the fire an right there is the extinguisher. SO frustrating......
I'm guessing this happened when no one was in the building
Right great insight, Maybe that women in the doorway at the end was there to check out what was going on. ! Thanks Nathan
UniquelyDezined - Artist Kathy Coulson Prough Woman in the door way? Oh, silly me, I thought that it was a fire fighter since they're wearing fire fighting gear.
@@Schobbish Probably happened late at night when there wasn't many staff.
This is why I’m glad they use electronic ballasts now opposed to the old style.
Spot on placement for a fire extinguisher,
So it took the FD 7.5 minutes to arrive from the time of the water-fall alarm which started around 12:30. If the building had monitored smoke detectors, FD would have been there before sprinkler activation, saving all of that water damage!
Doubtful. By the time a smoke detector activates in a commercial building, notifies the alarm monitoring company, they either call the building or the fire department, the fire department responds, finds the Knox-Box and discovers that there isn't a current key and have to break in...
Would have been nice to show the 'rest of the video' instead of a few frames showing what happened next.
@John In Milford
You weren’t looking. A firefighter enters in the last second of the video.
Ethan Lamoureux : Yah, I had to run it slo-mo to see it, my 'puter was kicking to the next video at that point. My previous has been corrected, thanks.
Starts with a 6 Dollar fire...then leads to a $6,000 swimming pool.
the idea is that if a fire gets bigger it will probably consume the whole building and could potentially kill someone... the water from a sprinkler will damage a small portion of the building and it's unlikely to kill someone... so....
Better a $6000 swimming pool than a 6 million total loss of the building!
Without the sprinklers, the fire would have grown much larger by the time the fire department arrives. Larger fire means more water required to extinguish the fire, thus more water damage.
Sprinklers save lives by slowing the spread of fire (in some cases even extinguishing it completely), and also reduce property damage due to fire, smoke, and water.
Think about it, how much water do you think comes out of a fire hose compared to a single sprinkler head? Hint: A LOT.
Sprinklers are always better than no sprinklers.
or it leads do a 600.000 burnt down building and a bust company
This makes me want to design a camera with computer system that can identify open flame and notify the appropriate individuals
They are already available. Simplex I believe makes it. I forget the other company that I have seen, i think it might have been Ademco. It's being used in very large buildings. There are also 2 things being used that most people never see or hear about:
"Beam Detectors" This shoots a laser across large distances and if the beam dims at the opposite end, it activates. This can be used uner canopies outdoors where a conventional detector cannot be used. I have seen them at some home improvement stores' garden areas. They have to set a bit of a dely on tem in that application to deal with the birds!
"Tube Detectors" Long runs of PEX tubing that has holes drilled everyplace you need detection, or at code required intervals. These are sometimes seen in Hotel's corridors where a drill hole is at every single door. There might be 50 or more detection holes on a run, imagine the cost of 5 individual smoke detectors! The pipe goes to a single detection device that uses a sort of pump to pull a sample continually.
And if there's a flood it shuts off power stuff but nothing but the system
Ugh, I bet that was the STANKEST fire!! Overheating/melting pitch is the WORST smell!! As a teenager, I had a bedroom in the basement of my family home. Our basement had drop ceilings and fluorescent lights everywhere but the laundry room and the storage room-my bedroom included. I can still remember the god-awful, cloying, absolutely NAUSEATING stink when one of the ballasts in those lights started to go bad. Fortunately, my sperm donor, who was actually a good dad when I was a kid, always replaced the ballasts and fixed things, before it did anything but stink. But MAN, that stink. You could almost taste it, and it seemed like it hung around FOREVER. I didn't even want to sleep in my bedroom when it smelled like that! And with this fire, you have not only that, but the melted plastic of the wet floor sign, plus whatever else was burning in that janitor's closet. It must have been SO bad. Blegh. Glad we don't have smell-o-vision, lol. Also glad the fire didn't get too out of hand.
*Usually not good when fireballs dripping from ceiling.....*
How ironic...the fire extinguisher arrow is right there and no one present to use it. Apparently camera's are worthless for fires. Perhaps smoke detection would be a better option connected to a home security system with monitoring to alert fire dept. So much of what we consume comes from the orient with no U.L. listings...we have become so vulnerable. Even meat inspection requirements have now been lifted so we might be eating horse meat being sold as beef. I know, I know...how does this have anything to do with this fire?....it's a general theme that endangers all our safety.
The fire didn't spread for a long time. Quality carpet.
It's tile.
It looks like the ceiling is dripping burning plastic
Should have smoke detectors. Modern optical sensors would have activated the fire alarm before you can see the fire. Everybody would be out Before the building is full of toxic smoke...
Who said they didn’t have those? There isn’t even any sound to this video for you to know that.
If a building is fully sprinklers there is no need for smokes
Was that a fluorescent ceiling panel light that failed and caused this fire?
but i think that babie didnt only put out light ;) more some hot stuff XD
I think its the ballast in the fixture that failed and is leaking tar
I've seen fire and I've seen rain.
And both have come down from 'ceiling, once again...
Lol.
Why did it take so long to trigger the fire suppression system?
Max W sprinklers rely on temperature to activate. So if it hasn't hit the sprinklers standards they will not set off.
Anthelion Gaming probably because there wasn't as much smoke in the beginning
Sprinklers will not go off because of smoke. They go off when the temperature is high enough to bust the bulb.
fire sprinkers won"t activate until it reach a temperature at least 153F
Computergk91 Gaming I install them, just to let you know it's 155 not 153 lol. Plus they make sprinklers that go off at lower and higher temperatures you can tell what temp it will go off by looking that the bulb color
I assume the ceiling continued burning while the sprinklers were going
Is the tar in a light ballast dripping down. I have seen this happen.
That's all it takes! You don't need a built-in system. They make self-contained units that will fill the room and suffocate the fire.
I wonder what was burning, was it ironically a emergency exit sign/light with battery failure? it seems to be molten plastic so I don't think it was a light fixture like in the hallway.
I guess it could be large PVC conduit with conductors melting and dripping. would be great if they posted their findings :)
Smoke detector was on fire...LOL
might have been the ballast in the light fixture
It's raining fire..
Basically fire is coming out of the ceiling at first then water comes out of the ceiling
Sprinklers are good. But they continue to flow well after the fire is extinguished. It takes time to shut the water off and even there is residual water in the pipe that will continue to pour out until there is none left to drip out. That being said they still are good idea We had sprinkler wedges we made to force into the sprinkler head to slow the flow of water down to a level that was controllable.
People should look up how sprinkler systems work, like what causes them to activate before they post something like "why didnt they go off earlier with all that smoke" There are several different kinds btw. And also look up how you "turn them off"
If your curious about those things, a little self-education never killed anyone. And then people are like "the water did more damage than the fire" Yea, because it did what its designed to do... Put the small fire out before it did a lot of damage.
Yeah they go off by heat right?
@@donnawensley2178 Yep. Heat melts a wax seal or breaks a piece of glass inside the sprinkler head. To turn it off, either the tank runs out of water, you shut the water to the building off or you use wedges to plug it up. Some buildings have a valve room where you can find the valve and turn it off.
Wouldn’t the Sprinkler make the fire worse? It is shooting out water, and water and electricity don’t mix. So how did it extinguish the fire?
How does water extinguish fire???
😕
+spokanefire Very nice video showing the effectiveness of sprinklers! I'm curious - was the alarm transmitted by a smoke detector wired into an alarm system or monitored by a security service, or when the sprinkler started flowing did it automatically send the alarm, or was it called in by a passerby? Thanks!
Almost all sprinklers ain't the deluge system like you see in the movies. Almost all of them have a glass bulb filled with a liquid. As the liquid is heated up, pressure rise inside the bulb and eventually cause it to break. That bulb press against a plug, which block the water hole. By breaking it release the plug, which let water out.
This prevent unnessary flooding.
Also, contrary to popular belief, a sprinkler system is NOT to extinguish a fire. It may be able to, but the main purpose is to prevent the fire from spreading and limiting the fire damage.
A fun fact is that some system are actually filled with air. This prevent the water from freezing inside the pipe and causing the pipe to break. A small compressor will maintain some air pressure inside the system. It limit the speed at which it can put air in. The reason is that there might be some tiny leaks, so you want to be able to keep the system pressurised, without overcomming the sprinkler head. There is a special water valve that isolate the inside system from the city water pressure. The way it work is that due to the construction the air will force it to stay closed with quite less pressure, about 1/5 of the city water pressure is required to keep it closed. If the city pressure is 60psi, they need like 12psi of air to keep it closed. They will of course put a bit more for safety. When the sprinkler head open, the air leak out, the air pressure drop, the valve open and the city water can now flow, and the system is now at 40-60psi. Soon after, an optional booster pump can kick in and pressurise the system to like 150psi.
So you get fire, heat cause the bulb to break, plug fall, air rush out, valve open, city water flow, pump kick in, even more water flow.
All of the other sprinklers head will NOT open, unless they get too hot too, then the bulb of them break...
Take note that there is some sensors on the system that detect when it got activated, and usually when there is a fault, can be any or all or none of: low air pressure, low city water pressure, high air pressure (that would cause a delay in the water), high water pressure (can cause the valve to open) and more.
thephantom1492 i do not understand this rambling. He asked about the fire alarm, not how a sprinkler system works. As for the alarm. It seems from the response time of the fire department compared to the time the sprinklers went off that the flow\tamper switch on the fire riser sent the alarm in. If there were a monitored fire alarm the fire dept probably would have been there sooner as the smoke would have set off the smoke detectors in the A\C units.
Most, if not all legal sprinkler systems are remotely monitored. They are also generally wired through a local fire alarm.
If not actively monitored, water could flow for days or weeks if the building is unoccupied when a sprinkler opened.
@@supervillain3213 fire department does not show up for duct detectors in alarm as they are also usually set to trip a supervisory event
When you are standing under a pool of lava in Minecraft. Also, RIP mop bucket.
I worked for a county running their telephone system. One day I got a phone call that a department needed a replacement phone because someone left a desk fan on overnight and it caused a small fire, and the sprinkler system doused the phone. The department was the county fire marshall!
It looks kinda saitisfying!😍💜🌸
Hey it's Conniexo no
Maybe if you're a pyromaniac.
Bot
Why do these cams hold up so WELL!!!!!
Fire starts mission impossible theme kicks in...😂
That was a spot on placement of that sprinkler head.
For the two years when i worked as an assistant Kitchen Manager, i am glad this never happened in my building.....i would not have wanted to have that talk with the owners
Many people think that if one sprinkler head goes on, they all go on. That only happens in the movies.
I'm just here for the comments from the "professional" TH-cam firefighters.
Is that vinyl flooring? I don't think ceramic tile would burn like it seems to be...
Mitchell Spanheimer that is the melted plastic and stuff from the light dripping on the ground and staying on fire......
Electric fires are frightening! Unplug everything before you leave the house!
That looks like the breaker box overheating and must’ve been overloaded, that’ll cause it to burst into flames. There’s a mop bucket in the closet, so I am guessing that is the housekeeping closet, that’s where the breaker box is at my work.
Yeah Sprinklers!
Sprinkler system saved the building very cool
😮 water and electricity don’t mix. But the water put out the fire.
In my school some kid burned the whole bathroom and we were sent home early and that bathroom was never fixed even 2 years later
Any smoke detectors hooked into a central station ?
The only thing that would have decreased property damage would be if the 2 doors were closed. Would have heated up quicker and put the fire out almost instantly with little smoke travel.
FIRE SPRINKLERS SAVE LIVES--and property too!
I was hard rooting for the mop bucket but the fire prevailed
Man my ceiling is using the bathroom with the door open
Wait, what was dripping prior to the fire? It looks like liquid
Not the mop bucket!!!
and the wet floor signs
how much of it was damaged?? And was it able to reopen after a quick fix? And why didn't the power shut its self down? Isn't that the job of the power box to trigger it to shut down when something like that happens??? Glade no one was there and no one got hurt. And I am glade that you didn't lose the whole building.
I wonder what causes fluorescent lights to do that?
Why don't those types of ballasts have thermal fuses in them to prevent that kind of catastrophic overheating?
John Rickard Thermal fuses weren't used in much of anything years ago. Research GE Coffeemaker fires. No thermal fuse, a bad watertank seal and drip* drip* drip* on the timer- it would come on with no water and burn the house down. GE Sold the entire small appliance line to Black and Decker who completely redesigned them- adding 2 thermal fuses. You'll find them in everything now, right down to a can opener!
I don’t get it. What’s burning ? Look like something melt down
What happened? Was it the plastic cover on a lighting fixture?
Dripping molten metal and burning plastic since it was probably arcing up inside the fixture
Benjamin Esposti ballast heat
Took the sprinklers long enough to activate. But they did their job. Where is the security people who are supposed to be watching the cameras?
Smokes seems to be pumping from down hallway near end..was it extension above suspended ceiling and above sprinkler level?
Nice But There should be Detectors also which can sense a hour before sprinkler start activated...
You'd think with all that smoke, the smoke alarms would have tripped the local fire alarm system and brought someone a running.
It most likely did, However maybe it not an addressable system the person couldn’t locate it
That damn fire extinguisher is just taunting me
This is why fire alarms are important
The irony. To the extreme right, a fire extinguisher sign and the extinguisher.
Them ohms and voltage and current weren’t adding up there buddy boy 😂
didnt this building have smoke Detectors?
Was it those LED lights on the ceiling again?
I discovered that aluminium wiring was used for the high-current circuits in my home built in the late 1960s. The dryer started acting strangely, so I inspected the outlet and found one pole had heated up & oxidized. I replaced the outlet and cut back the bad cable. I re-terminated it after sanding the exposed aluminum and using the required zinc-containing paste. No more trouble.
Did you use a proper CU/AL rated outlet? If not, then your replacement is illegal.
But most outlets are dual rated, so it is probable that you are OK.
You are fortunate there was enough excess wire that you could reterminate.
buggsy5 , you may want to do the same with all of your outlets, switches, and wire junctions in circuit boxes. Better still would be to replace all aluminum wiring. Many electrical fire fatalities happened before they figured out the problem you discovered here, yourself.
i'm not sure i like how long it took for that sprinkler to kick in
U have fire...ahhhh, but the sprinkler destroys your company....
I think my head is stuck sideways now
good thing that fire didnt extend above and was only below.. that would have been a lot worse and the sprinklers wouldnt have kept it in check
pretty quick response time for the fire dept. 9 minutes from the alarm time to putting eyes on the hotspot.
Bruh. The sprinkler system put the fire out, not fire fighters…
Is there a fire alarm?
4:51 the fire is trying so hard to spread but it takes so long
No monitored fire system?
Improper grounds because the main breaker would have turned off the power
did the building collapse at free-fall speed into its own footprint?
Ummm what? I highly doubt the structural integrity was compromised by such a small fire.
No, it was eventually hit by comet Foolish-Idiot
I feel like this is a hilarious reference to Towering Inferno, anyone taking him serious has issues
There is a fire still spreading on the ceiling I thought it was by law to have slow burning or fire resistant ceiling panels or slow burning fiberglass in the loft space specially in a business premises
This is from an advertisement for fire safety, just so you guys know.
Most likely happened when nobody was there
John Chambers you think?
Malinda Mooradian
Yes because they would have seen that fire extinguisher to the right and that person would have extinguished the fire.
John Chambers You didn't watch very well. Somebody was there. At 16:53 you can see a woman discovering the fire and calling 911.
Max Zomboni
I did not watch the whole thing, but I would have done it before everything goes on fire.
Fire is above the sprinkler lol
its raining sparks from out of the sky sparks no need to ask why
You can set off sprinklers with a laser. Saw it somewhere.
With a powerful enough laser, yes. I saw a blue laser shoot tunnels through dense fog. I find that even better than sprinkler shenanigans.
What get me is WHY is there not a FIRE 🔥 ALARM in the room
Irony: It sits in the top right corner...