Pop quiz: You've got a roomful of electrical equipment. How do you put out a fire?
- Reference: 1610352912
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/11/who_me/
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Our tale takes us back to the closing decade of the last century and comes from "Joe", a senior techie at a major US East Coast satellite uplink/downlink hub.
[2]
"This included a vestigial radio circuit business the management refused to abandon," he told us.
"The video staff knew nothing about the radio operation. The radio staff returned the favour by ignoring the video." Joe, the senior party, was responsible for both sides.
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On overnight shifts, the whole shebang was run by just two operators. One was always from the video side of things. The other might know something about the radio workings, but not always. If there was a crisis with the latter, some improvisation would be needed.
"The radio guys had just gotten a new 400 by 400 matrix switch," recalled Joe happily. "This was the latest toy the radio industry had developed. We could switch any input to any output or multiple outputs. This was modern magic. It filled six racks.
"We had 12 other racks loaded with satellite receivers and transmitters."
It all sounds like a technological marvel for the time. Right up until one learns about how fire suppression worked. Joe told us that halon was the preferred medium since it wouldn't cause the gear to short out when it discharged.
However, mindful of costs, the management opted to save a bit of money and go for an alternative.
"We had a standard fire suppression system that released a deluge of WATER when it was activated."
What could possibly go wrong?
The radio operators had been warned about the sprinkler heads. The video operators noted the concerns, but promptly forgot all about them until the fateful night when The Call came in.
A new radio circuit was urgently needed, but none of the radio operators were on call, just a pair of video operators who had to improvise as best they could.
"The video operator grabbed a receiver from the storeroom. Except the rack was full," explained Joe. "No problem, put it on top of the rack..."
Alas, the height of the rack plus the height of the receiver equalled interference with the sprinkler head and a surprise shower for the tech. In a room stuffed full of electrical devices.
Shocking, we're sure.
Fortunately, only the sprinkler head that had been introduced to the receiver had kicked off. Three racks had to be hurriedly powered down and 30 circuits were lost. It fell to the fire department to turn off the system. In the meantime, the offending sprinkler head was covered with a rag to stop the worst of the spraying.
"Imagine," mused Joe, "what would have happened if all the heads had triggered..."
As is so often the case, the manager who had come up with the wheeze of using water had long departed. Doubtless for more responsibility and a higher pay grade by the time his cost cutting had resulted in what was very much a short, sharp shock.
[4]
Decisions taken by the departed can often return to nibble the posterior of the present. Ever wondered if a long-forgotten manager has even woken with Who, Me? on his mind while you're faced with mayhem not of your own making? Let us know [5]with an email . ®
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Sprinkler myth is all wet
All the sprinkler heads going off at the same time only happens in bad movies. Each sprinkler head has a heat activated trigger that keeps the water valve in each head closed unless the air temperature at that specific head rises above the trigger value. This system was designed a long time ago when elec-trickery was understood to be unreliable in a crisis, so no common signals for false alarm disasters.
Still a dumb idea to use water, when CO2 is cheap and plentiful. Too bad the horns that announce its release are so loud the vibration can damage the equipment (hard drives mostly) it is there to protect.
Re: Sprinkler myth is all wet - not always true
There are two types of sprinkler head - the common type - heat activated that works as you described and the normally dry type where the sprinkler heads do not have valves - instead a single valve supplies water to all the sprinklers when it is activated. This second type is often connected to a dry riser that fire engines can connect to. This allows fire engines to drench the whole property without carrying hoses up many flights of stairs.
Re: Sprinkler myth is all wet
Umm, not really.
A deluge fire suppression system has one valve and 'dry' pipework, once the valve is opened then all sprinkler heads spray.
https://www.vfpfire.com/systems-deluge.php
It's used in places where risk of leaks from pressurised pipework is a "bad thing".
Best fire system I ever saw was a 'hypoxic' or reduced oxygen system, the datacenter had an oxygen depleted atmosphere, five or six percent lower than atmospheric, which made it impossible to light anything that didn't have its own oxidiser but perfectly possible to work in unless you had severe lung problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoxic_air_technology_for_fire_prevention
Re: Sprinkler myth is all wet
I was always under the impression that when one sprinkler went off that the pressure drop within the system was supposed to cause the other glass bulbs to no-longer be held under tension thus dropping them out or allowing the bulbs to break owing to said drop in pressure.
I suppose it might depend on the specs of the system and the local regs as to how they trigger and if they can be cascaded like that.
Also on further reflection, having the sprinkler closest to the fire only trigger make more sense to focus the water where the fire is rather than just making everything wet, lowering the total pressure and even total amount of available water.
Fire icon natch.
Should read
Bodged upgrade by unqualified technician triggers cost-cutting water sprinkler installed by ignorant manager
Nice title
Just another Pink Floyd fan....
I remember a fire in trunking at an office I worked it. What do you think the software developers did, as the acrid plasticky smoke poured out of the trunking, and flames licked up the wall? Do you think that:
a) they grabbed the fire-extinguisher, a mere 8 feet away, and let rip like heroes?
b) grabbed their phones, and left the office to go to the pub (over the road), hitting the fire-alarm on the way out?
c) stood around admiring the pretty flames?
I’m ashamed to say that the correct answers are: Some (myself included, I’m sorry to say) opted for b. A significant number opted for c. And it was left to the delivery manager to save the day and use the aforementioned fire-extinguisher. No significant damaged occured, and no computers were harmed during the excitement.
My manager used halon...
Except he forgot to require that the server room into which it was to be deployed be sealed against the stuff escaping into the rest of the building. One fire alarm later the halon deployed and the building had to be evacuated.
His punishment for the screwup? He got promoted.
It was all the rest of us could do not to strangle the fekkin' bastadge.
Our budget went to shite for six months while we had to run everything from the DR facility so the primary could be retrofitted with the proper seals to prevent another attempted mass slaughter of the building occupants.
Nepotism, it's the only reason some people are still alive instead of having been Darwined off the planet.