FIRE SCINCE IS VOODOO SCIENCE

What is called fire science today is not science at all. And more often than not is a criminal operation. The problem is a corrupt code making operation called the National Fire protection Association (NFPA). The NFPA is a non government business operating as an association that is able to create law that is then enforced by local, state and federal governments. The NFPA was created by the fire insurers during 1896 to create standards for the fire insurers. In time its powers to create codes to regulate commerce increased. The International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) began to use the NFPA codes as their expertise. As per the fire officials, not code means not safe. This reliance on codes created by the NFPA allows an inspector with a high school education at best; dictate to builders, architects, engineers and key people throughout commerce. The fire officials began to define fire safety as compliance with the NFPA codes. Both the insurers and the fire services used the NFPA codes to their own benefit. It is the enormous fire destruction in the United States that motivates the public to buy fire insurance and to fund the amazingly costly fire services. Without fire both organizations would suffer. The NFPA grew in powers to regulate commerce and today creates more than a hundred legally enforced codes and standards to control most areas of commerce. Those businesses that market fire related products and systems send representatives to the NFPA code making meeting rooms, at no expense to the NFPA, to write Americas fire codes and standards. Invariably, those who benefit and profit from fire structure the codes and standards to their own benefit. When a code is created, nearly always the fire services convince the various legislatures to adopt the NFPA codes as law. Thus, a non-government entity is making laws that impact every segment of our society. To maximize the profits and the benefits from fire, the NFPA has created codes that dramatically increase the fire problem in the United States. For example, the fire sprinkler industry profits from fire. The NFPA created fire sprinkler design and installation codes that have allowed a small group of sprinkler firms to control the industry nationally and to regulate installation prices so high that I call them extortion prices. But heres the big problem, many years ago data was available to show that an electrically monitored fire sprinkler system will reduce the risk of serious fire loss by 99.9 percent. In other words a fire sprinkler system is capable of reducing fire losses to near zero. Obviously, this would be extremely harmful to the insurance industry and the fire services. Also it would dramatically reduce profits for many organizations that market fire related products and systems. Thus, to aid those organizations that benefited from fire and therefore supported the NFPA code making operations, it was necessary to prevent sprinklers from being installed in most buildings. The compensation for the sprinkler industry was to create codes and policies that made a handful of sprinkler firms a near monopoly operation. Competition was nearly completely eliminated. The small number of sprinkler firms was allowed to enormously overprice sprinklers. Thus, the industry accepted a greatly reduced market for protective systems but gained a very lucrative and exclusive market. The result was that a fire control system capable of near eliminating out-of-control fires was barred from (I estimate) probably 98 percent of the buildings needing protection. Hence, the NFPA codes have dramatically magnified the American fire destruction and resulted in hundreds of thousands of fire deaths and injuries. The sprinkler solution to fire was not the only casualty of a corrupt code making system. The primary reason why small fires (that are easy to snuff out) grow large and deadly is because they are not discovered early and reliably. A new born fire is like a tiger cub, it is not yet able to

kill and it is easy to kill. But allow that new born fire even four or five minutes of free burn time and it can becomes a killer. If a fire detection code that was voted into existence during 1966 had remained viable, homes would be near immune from deadly fires today. That code required reliable fire detectors for both the smoldering and the flaming type fires. But the near elimination of fire is not what the code system promotes. So, fire tests were rigged and falsified to provide justification for removing reliable fire detectors from the code while opening the door to an absolutely fraudulent, phony and frequently deadly type so-called smoke detector. More honest testing proved that this NFPA promoted device would have a 50 to 80 percent failure rate in the field. But, pressure was applied to the fire test report writers to bury the report. I estimate that this segment of the code corruption destroyed about 75,000 lives. The fire services have long been aware of the extremely high failure rate of the phony smoke detector that the NFPA inflicted on this nations families. Here are quotes that prove it: Smoke detectors were an unknown term to 99 percent of the population 10 years ago. Today, millions of single family dwellings have them, yet there is no reduction in loss of life from fire. This paradox has not been explained. Source: Fire Chief Magazine, January, 1980. We put 50 million smoke detectors in buildings in America in a two year period and our fire loss and death rate goes up. Were having a little trouble explaining these things.
Statement by Gordon Vickery, former head of the U.S. Fire Administration, September 1980.

The NFPA inflicted a fire problem on the United States that is incredibly destructive: The U.S. fire problem, on a per capita basis, is one of the worst in the industrial world.To put this in context, the annual losses from floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters combined in the United States average just a fraction of those from fires.Fire in the United States, 13th Edition, Federal Emergency Management Agency Page 1, Oct 2004 Now lets talk fire science as it exists today within the framework of the NFPA code system. The codes are anti-science and anti-engineering because; if true fire science and true fire engineering had been allowed to be practiced in America, our fire problem would have all but disappeared many years ago. It is only by barring engineering, science, innovation, free marketing and creativity that the fire destruction has been maintained so high and so profitable. Today our so-called fire science too often amounts to engineering by corrupted fire code. I call it Voodoo Engineering. I consider those fire science instructors who teach with the corrupted codes of the NFPA substituting for real engineering to be: Children Killers. EVIL WINS WHEN GOOD PEOPLE DO NOTHING.

www.TheWorldFireSafetyFoundation.org www.Firecrusade.com www.AmericasHolocaust.org

RICHARD M. PATTON, FIRE PROTECTION ENGINEER AUTHOR, THE AMERICAN HOME IS A FIRE TRAP THE CRUSADE AGAINST FIRE DEATHS

rmpatton@surewest.net