BC Chapter

The traditional role of firewalls was to establish fire divisions designed to restrict fire to one division with no attempts to extinguish the fire.

Two strategies were generally available to establish fire divisions:

• Spatial separation
• Firewalls

Firewall construction was typically of masonry construction in order to prevent penetration by falling debris arising from adjacent collapsing construction.

Recent changes to the NBCC permit walls that are not masonry provided that the fire resistance rating is protected against damage.

Designs of conventional open solid fuel burning fire places vary; these devices are primitive in terms of efficiency and heat transfer and comfort and result in negative impacts to local air quality, yet remain widely in use.  The majority of municipalities will no longer permit the construction of these primitive heating devices.

Fire Protection and Loss Control in Power Generation Facilities:

Power generation facilities vary significantly depending on the mode of Power Generation. For instance, they may be nuclear, hydro-electric, steam powered turbo-generators or wind or tide powered with or without interconnection with private and public utility grids. A combination of facilities is relatively common on large sites.

The mechanisms for upgrading buildings have developed significantly over the last 20 years- particularly in the City of Vancouver. While the current guidance for upgrading buildings is more definitive and intended to be flexible, the individual characteristics of historic and other existing buildings often require a bespoke i.e. customized-strategy to be developed.

The provincial push for exploration and development of natural gas in British Columbia requires significant investment in liquefied natural gas (LNG).  The hazards of liquefied natural gas are well documented but the extraction, processing and storage hazards as well as fire prevention and fire protection of LNG facilities require careful analysis and engineering judgement.

Jack Mawhinney, P. Eng., FSFPE, will provide a retrospective of his nearly 50-year career in fire protection in Canada and the United States.  Between 1965 and 2015, Jack’s career included 19 years in fire protection contracting in B. C., five years as technical advisor to the fire code committees at IRC in Ottawa, six years as a Senior Research Officer at the National Fire Laboratory in Ottawa, and 19 years in the U.S. as a senior engineer involved in fire testing of suppression systems and forensic analysis as an expert witness.  Mr.

The development of more sophisticated networks for fire alarm and communications systems may have widened the gap between the manufacturer and the electrical engineer/fire protection engineer responsible for defining the project requirements and articulating this is the design and specifications. The complexity of codes and standards also makes this an increasing challenge for manufacturers, engineers and authorities.

Mike van Geyn of Firestance Professional Services Ltd and John Ivison and Associates have spent almost 3 years working on two vintage wood frame buildings in the lower mainland. The first building had property use issues, rodent infestations, mould, plumbing leaks and remediation issues associated with asbestos containing materials. The decision by the Owners was to replace the plumbing systems and the building boilers/plumbing fixtures, kitchen and bathroom cabinets etc. Existing patches in fire separations had to be fire tested.

The risk of transformer loss due to fire and explosion have been studied for over half a century; however, failure to fully address transformer risks in underground, transportation and other networks, in commercial -and also existing building projects- continues to be a concern. Recent losses have shown the impact and subsequent damage that can occur. While transportation network fires for instance are often the subject of CFD modelling, this tends to focus on different fire scenarios that can understate the risk arising from fires originating in transformers in the system.