Introduction

Warehouses vary in size and are most commonly found at airports, seaports, factories and manufacturing plants. U.S. fire departments reported an estimated average of 1,350 structural fires per year in warehouses during 2003 ~ 2006, not including cold storage, residential storage and self-storage. These fires caused an average of five civilian deaths, 21 civilian injuries, and $124 million in direct property damage per annum.

Characteristics:

Warehouses usually store a wide variety of goods; from raw materials, components, hazardous materials, or finished goods associated with agriculture, manufacturing, or commerce. In 20% of warehouse fires, trash or waste was the item found to have ignited first, followed by electrical wiring (14%), fires which were intentionally set (13%), and heating equipment (10%). Intentional fires accounted for 21% of direct property damage.

Hazards Identified:

The leading items which caught fire at industrial and manufacturing structures included electrical distribution and wiring for lighting, confined trash or rubbish, heating equipment, torches, burners or soldering irons, materials associated with smoking, confined cooking fires, spontaneous combustions or chemical reactions, as well as fires which were intentionally set.

Risk and Potential Losses:

These type of hazards usually cause direct property damage and result in interruptions to business, as well as causing environmental issues such as pollution.

VFDS Advantages with this Type of Structure:

Protection for large areas with bulk storage are not efficient if covered by traditional detectors these usually only sound an alarm when the fire is already out of control. With VFDS™, an alarm is sounded early and can be reliably and quickly verified by remotely connecting to the relevant camera feed.