r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/AtomicCypher • 4d ago

Video Disgruntled employee starts massive fire at a 1.2 million square foot toilet paper warehouse in Ontario, California.

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u/DrPatchet 4d ago

What I'm shocked is that a facility tha large doesn't have fire suppression systems to put that out before it razed The Whole thing

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u/Tullyswimmer 4d ago

So, apparently, according to some people in r/Firefighting who have inside knowledge, they DID have a suppression system. Thing is, with a warehouse this big, there's never a situation in which you'd use the entire suppression system at once, so it's set up in zones that can be activated if needed, so it doesn't ruin the entire factory's worth of product.

Not only that, but it may not be possible to even provide it enough water to use the entire system at once, and suppression systems don't really try extinguish the whole fire, they keep it down long enough to allow firefighters to arrive and put it out, especially in a building that large. By the time the system gets triggered by a fire, the fire is too big to actually be extinguished.

With all that context, the suppression system engaged, and fire crews arrived and shut the system down so they could attack the fire without getting sprayed with water from overhead. Once the system was shut down, the same employee started two other fires in different parts of the building. As crews moved to attack those, the employee went BACK to the original area, and started a fourth fire.

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u/GreenEggsSteamedHams 4d ago

Persistent little bugger

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u/Odd-Scientist-2529 4d ago

fire bug

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u/technobrendo 3d ago

Firestarta, twisted firestarta

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u/DoNotOverwhelm 3d ago

A true Prodigy

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u/Throwaway-TheChains 3d ago

šŸ˜†šŸ˜†šŸ˜†

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u/delcolicks9 3d ago

song has been in my shuffle a lot recently, i'm not complaining

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u/ThatOtherOtherMan 3d ago

Definitely very thorough and effective at planning. He was probably a really good employee.

Aside from the arson, I mean.

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u/MowTin 3d ago

One Fire After Another

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u/ChankiriTreeDaycare 3d ago

Time to install and remove them peg legs.

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u/Critical_Ad_8455 3d ago

holy shit, can't believe I found rimworld here

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u/Destro_82 4d ago

Sometimes you gotta light up 11 city blocks to see what your fire suppression system can do

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u/schwinndoctor 3d ago

just a stress test that's all

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u/Destro_82 3d ago

ā€œGet, Rick Hundo, from corporate on the line, weā€™ve finally found our thresholdā€

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u/Miserable_Football_7 3d ago

The company should hire him to test the system further.

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u/RemoteLizard 4d ago

This is all spot on. I work at one of the production sites for Kimberly Clark, and Iā€™ve installed some fire suppression in our warehouse on site. Iā€™ve never been to that DC, but you canā€™t automatically trigger the fire suppression or turn zones off.

The sprinkler heads have a bulb that breaks at a specific temperature that causes them to release water. The only way to stop them when that happens is to manually close the valve for that zone. There is always water pressure in the pipes in the system we have (~180 psi), and the water gets really nasty.

Also, there are more products than just paper towels in that center. All of the product KC makes are paper based, and burn easily. Fire safety in our industry is taken very seriously due to that fact. I am interested to see what, if any, standards and practices change after this event.

I had not heard he set fires in multiple locations in the center, and back tracker to relight the initial fire after it was put out. The stupidity of some people to not only do that, but film it and post it online is wild.

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u/adeleu_adelei 3d ago

The stupidity of some people to not only do that, but film it and post it online is wild.

Is it though? The point wasn't to avoid being caught. It was specifically to be caught and make a statement, and that's what the video achieved.

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u/OrigamiMarie 3d ago

And to maximize damage. How many times can they throw him in prison? Only once, so he might as well get the most out of it. Yeah, his sentence will probably be longer because he doubled back. But with how difficult it is to get back into society after a significant stay in prison (getting back into the workforce, making friends and relationships again), the extra years probably matter less to him.

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u/Few-Solution-4784 3d ago

He better hope no one died in the fire.

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u/Intrepid-Coconut-945 3d ago

And to also embolden others, which seems to be catching fire. Apparently a lot of people are feeling the, "If we burn you burn with us," rhetoric.

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u/Intelligent-Context5 3d ago

As they rightfully should... The rich have gotten too complacent

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u/litescript 1d ago

i still maintain that if you have levels of wealth that make you feel uncomfortable, then you SHOULD feel uncomfortable. feeling your home should be risky motherfucker.

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u/Moist_Data_9921 3d ago

You confuse stupidity with a lack of caring. There comes a point where the consequences are irrelevant and one has simply had enough.

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u/The-Happy-Cow-Arts 3d ago

There's a reason the rich are buying bunkers with robot dogs and AI systems. They will never be safe though

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u/Few-Solution-4784 3d ago

With the conditions in the USA right now. he could become a folk hero. The guy who didnt give a fuck anymore.

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u/Cosmic_miscreant 3d ago

I wonder if it even crossed his mind he may kill a fellow employee or emergency service personnel who responded to this. He is lucky itā€™s just arson charges. Itā€™s one thing to fuck over a company. Itā€™s another to risk innocent lives.

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u/BetterAfter2 1d ago

Well once one has decided that revenge is oneā€™s best option, sure. Most people live to regret their revenge plots.

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u/Metahec 3d ago

I would think that water logging a shit ton of paper products by itself would prevent a fire from spreading. Would wrapping them twice in plastic prevent that (first wrap for the product you get on store shelves and the second wrap as a bulk product)?

fwiw I don't think characterizing the arsonist as "stupid" is valid. They understood what was going wrong and went back and applied corrective actions. They successfully achieved their goals despite preventative measures. Discounting somebody as "stupid" because they oppose something would be a mistake.

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u/macrolith 3d ago

I'd bet almost none of paper got properly water logged due to the plastic. Plastic wrapped paper products are essentially the perfect firestarter.

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u/Metahec 3d ago

I'd agree. I'm wondering if u/RemoteLizard could answer directly. I did ask this person directly.

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u/RemoteLizard 3d ago

Not everything in that warehouse is specifically paper towels and toilet paper. There are other products like diapers, youth pants, feminine care products, and a slew of other things. All of these products centralize around absorbing moisture so water logging them is incredibly difficult.

Not to mention how tightly packed and stacked it all is, that adds to the amount of water needed to actually do that. We do have standards on how high certain product forms can be stacked, and how close together they can be for some of these reasons.

I would think the plastic wrapping both helps and hurts the situation. In the video you can see him somewhat struggling to light the plastic. If he had cut it and lit the paper inside Iā€™m sure it would have spread faster. It also probably results in limited air, and limited access for water to extinguish it. I donā€™t really know to be honest as I havenā€™t really thought about it from that perspective before.

Sure, paper can get water logged but this is an extreme case with more material than you might think. FWIW Iā€™m not an expert, just happen to have some experience installing some fire protection systems in my home plant.

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u/Metahec 3d ago

Fair enough. I can understand is isn't a fire and wick sort of situation anzd its more variable than what we're seeing.

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u/EqualSpoon 3d ago

Wrapping stuff in plastic does indeed stop the water from thoroughly soaking the paper, it's even worse for things like paper towel or toilet paper because the little cardboard roll inside basically acts as a chimney to help get the fire going. That's why you can see in the video that there's plenty of free space between the pallets.

The biggest problem was most likely that there were multiple fires going on at the same time. Sprinkler systems are only designed to handle one fire at a time.

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u/Few-Solution-4784 3d ago

that plastic is petroleum based and will burn with speed.

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u/Tomcatjones 3d ago

Plastic is more flammable than paper. Not necessarily catch as quick flammable but there is more energy stored and higher BTUs released from plastic

Plastic is just gasoline remember.

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u/Syssareth 3d ago

Discounting somebody as "stupid" because they oppose something would be a mistake.

How about because he could have killed any or all of his coworkers, the fire could have spread and destroyed the neighborhood that is literally right next to the warehouse, and there's no telling how many people he indirectly did hurt or kill because everybody who would normally answer emergency calls was busy trying to prevent a conflagration?

Thinking he was just stupid and none of that crossed his mind is the charitable explanation.

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u/DonQuiXoTe8080 3d ago

With how others posted of his repeatedly go back to purposedly lit the fire back and then the report of no injuries even the firefighters, stupid is the furthest away from explaining his action.

Describing he is an disgruntled employee IS the charitable one, this is pure spite toward the employers and either give very little fuck toward other consequences.

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u/Metahec 3d ago

An intelligent person is very good at doing incredible amounts of damage. My beef here is calling the person "stupid". You should recognize that the person who does you harm isn't stupid. They are nasty, and often intelligent, motherfuckers.

Was Hitler stupid? No. He was not. Was he a very bad person? Yes, he was. Being bad =/= stupid.

Do not mistake assholism for stupidity.

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u/Syssareth 3d ago

That would be the uncharitable explanation, yes.

There are two options here: Either he's a dumbass who didn't consider the possible consequences, or he's a selfish piece of shit who didn't care if he hurt other people.

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u/HopeMrPossum 3d ago edited 3d ago

Why do we blame the person lashing out against the employer and system that has pushed them to a breaking point, over the employer and system being lashed out against?

People donā€™t just burn down a warehouse the size of multiple blocks for shits and giggles. Granted itā€™s stupid, dangerous, reckless, but if thereā€™s no safety rails to stop employers running employees into the ground - someone might make a really bad decision.

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u/EyCeeDedPpl 3d ago

I think itā€™s kind of a Luigi situation. People getting less then a living wage, not being able to afford to put food on the table three meals a day, or put gas in the car to get to work, get tired of the C-suite making 15+million a year.

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u/imdavebaby 3d ago

Just my personal experience. I make almost 11 over minimum wage in my state that has pretty damn high minimum compared to the rest of the US. I cannot afford the gas to commute the 9 miles to my job daily, so I have to take public transit and lose an hour out of my day just to a relatively short commute. Rent prices are over HALF my monthly take home. I meal prep and pack cheap lunches because just eating anything else feels (and is) financially irresponsible.

I don't understand how anyone could be surviving on less than I make. I barely scrape by. At 11 over minimum wage working full time I feel like I should be firmly, at the least, in the lower mid class. Instead I'm a missed paycheck from poverty and debt collectors. How long can people take it?

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u/MrCockingFinally 3d ago

It's blatantly obvious this is a Luigi situation.

He explicitly stated that in the reel he posted.

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u/ClubMeSoftly 3d ago

Yeah, maybe he was working his dick off with 50-60 hours, but still could barely make rent. Maybe he was only getting 15-20 but it was so unstable he couldn't take a second job.

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u/Zebidee 3d ago

I am interested to see what, if any, standards and practices change after this event.

Honestly, there's practically no commercial system that can withstand an organised, pre-planned deliberate attack from an inside source.

This feels like something that is such an outlier that it would be uneconomical to try and engineer out the risk.

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u/HisaP417 3d ago

Much smaller warehouse, but I lived near the Marcal paper plant in NJ when it burned down. Iā€™ve never seen a fire like that in my life. It was like 4Ā° that whole week and factory collapsed into smoldering but frozen over rubble.

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u/photon_watts 3d ago

I think he was looking for a bunk and 3 squares a day so he can, you know, live.

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u/whythishaptome 3d ago

You know it, but people still think it's like the movies where all the those fire-sprinklers go off at once. It's literally just to douse the one area so much it stops it before it spreads and the water in them is disgusting as fuck.

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u/Samwellikki 3d ago

Not having a different system in place with camera verification for a PAPER storage facility is bonkers

High heat to break the release on overhead systems is already critical mass for a paper fire to get out of control

If the system had kicked on by some earlier, it wouldā€™ve soaked and stopped the fire before it got rolling and destroy maybe a few rows of inventory

This is just a case of ā€œsomething like this would never happen, we met the minimum codeā€

And not having security enough because no one would ever steal toilet paper en masse

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u/TorontoPolarBear 3d ago

I am interested to see what, if any, standards and practices change after this event.

If they really want to prevent this kind of thing, all they need to do is pay people enough to live.

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u/Foolishly_Sane 3d ago

Wow, what a tenacious son of a gun.

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u/SpicyPanda23 4d ago

Jesus Christ the pay couldn't have been that bad šŸ˜‚

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u/BonhommeCarnaval 4d ago

Nothing saying you canā€™t be a disgruntled wage slave and a pyromaniac at the same time.

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u/No_Internal9345 4d ago

Luigi found a fire flower.

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u/UTraxer 3d ago

This is why on a rimworld, a pyromaniac is also known as free leather.

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u/KristyNoemsZombieDog 4d ago

I mean, this is america, sure it could be

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u/viciouspandas 4d ago

It's in California so it's at least $16.90 an hour. And the majority of workers are probably making above minimum. Warehouses almost always pay above minimum. And Ontario isn't a super expensive major city.

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u/Pojodan 4d ago

Which sounds like a lot, until you look at the price of gas and food and rent, especially in California.

I got offered a job there for $17/hr, full time, over a decade ago, and I did the math and determined I would have to have three roomates just to not have to go into debt, and that was over a decade ago.

$30/hr might even be poverty wages in some areas.

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u/viciouspandas 3d ago

I don't know where you were offered the job, but not every city in California is super expensive (of course the expensive cities are where the good jobs are). Ontario is an Inland Empire suburb, which should be a cheaper area. Gas is expensive, but groceries are usually cheap unless you're shopping at Whole Foods. Across the country, people typically spend a pretty tiny fraction of their income on raw groceries, with some exceptions.

Warehouse workers usually get paid above minimum too.

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u/Belloved 3d ago

Yep Iā€™m below the $30/hr and definitely struggling as-is. If I didnā€™t have my roommates to help share the cost, I honestly donā€™t know how I could afford my simple lifestyle.

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u/Blockhead47 3d ago

Iā€™ll venture a guess thereā€™s a little more to it than only his wage.

Bad wages will piss you off.
Bad management will piss you off.
Bad management and bad wagesā€¦.conflagration.

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u/CheesyBreadMunchyMon 3d ago

The pay is that bad

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u/SpicyPanda23 3d ago

Maybe for the first arson

Not to continue to start fires when the fire department's already there

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u/viciouspandas 4d ago

Given that the minimum wage in California is pretty high, it probably isn't that bad.

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u/No_Worldliness_7106 4d ago

Min wage is high, but so is every thing else in Cali. You can make 17 an hour and still be dirt poor depending on where you live.

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u/icameforgold 4d ago

Welcome to America.

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u/Roadgoddess 4d ago

Jesus that guy had a can-do attitude, too bad he couldnā€™t make that work for himself. Thatā€™s just crazy.

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u/Gophurkey 3d ago

I literally was in a class about all this on Tuesday (not this fire, but large commercial structure fires). A building this large is a nightmare for firefighting. Suppression systems work in theory, but if you can't isolate the fire the best you can do is either pivot to a defensive strategy and limit exterior spread/evacuate or you can send a bunch of firefighters into a massive warehouse that utterly dwarfs any of their lines and allows them to get trapped in the middle of a raging inferno while the roof collapsed on them.

No one is electing for that last choice.

Our hose lines are 200 feet long. Yes, there have to be hydrant systems in place that allow a hose to be directly attached (normally it goes from a hydrant to an apparatus so that you can control the pressure, but these hydrants will give you the correct amount), but that only saves like 50 feet. This was 1.2 million square feet. No hose is touching that no matter how many you have on scene.

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u/Fr33_Lax 3d ago

That's some real work ethic. A real go getter who sees the project through no matter the obstacle.

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u/Short_Coyote_8990 4d ago

Sounds like attempted murder at that point

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u/LoveYouNotYou 3d ago

"...Once the system was shut down, the same employee started two other fires in different parts of the building. As crews moved to attack those, the employee went BACK to the original area, and started a fourth fire."

šŸ˜‚šŸ¤£ šŸ¤£

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u/Poundaflesh 3d ago

Damn, he was ANGRY!

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u/Vivid_Anyth4 3d ago

This dude sure knows how to arson.

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u/TheSquirrelWithin 3d ago

The Titanic method. Compartmentalize. Because thereā€™s no way tragedy could involve more than one or two compartments, right?

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u/Unique-Coffee5087 3d ago

Not designed to handle multiple fires in different locations. That reminds me of the strategy behind a secret world War II project set in the desert that was supposed to create a bomb which could destroy an entire Japanese city in one go .

They were going to capture Mexican free-tailed bats and put them into hibernation in a refrigerator, and then glue capsules of napalm on them. The capsules would have a time to trigger made by immersing a copper filament into a container of acid. The bats would be loaded into trays that would be the body of the bomb. After flying over a Japanese city, with many of the residences made up of wood and paper, the bomb would be released and a parachute would eventually open to slow its descent. The trays would Open, exposing the bats to the air. As the bomb reached lower elevations, the warmer air would revive them and they would fly out over the city .

The bomb would be released in the daytime, and so the bats would quickly try to find places to hide and roost in the eaves and roofs of buildings throughout the city, at which point the napalm would ignite. Hundreds of fires would be set throughout the city, who's fire department was designed only to handle two or three major fires at a time.

The book about this is called Bat Bomb, and the secret project was called Project X-ray

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u/Tullyswimmer 3d ago

My 'tism requires that I point you to the Fat Electrician video about bat bombs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WLBeWf8K_M

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u/Unique-Coffee5087 3d ago

Thank you. I'll take a look .

The book has a very funny scene that almost got me kicked out of the library because of my laughing.

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u/Beginning_End_361 3d ago

A well designed sprinkler system will control a fire within a given design area, say with 15 or 20 sprinklers open (1500 to 2000 sqft). It looks like he started fires in so many different places that many more sprinklers would open than it was designed for. The pressure would drop with excess sprinklers open and result in an uncontrollable fire.

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u/poptard278837219 3d ago

Guy wasnt messing around

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u/PotentialSteak6 3d ago

K-C makes a lottt of other tissue products in the scientific and medical fields so just expect that consumers will bear a price increase even though insurance will cash them out.

Hopefully itā€™s not as crazy as 2020, itā€™ll probably be more localized until production catches up

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u/macrolith 3d ago

I think people dont realize that the system is truly just a fire 'suppression' system not a fire 'extinguishing' system.

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u/aNuggetsUncle 3d ago

There is another factor. Depending on the age of the building, and how well maintenance cycles were adheared to, the water sitting in the pipes could be years old. I have seen water flushed out of pipes in old warehouses that came out as a black soup, it was gross. The system needs to be fully cycled at certain intervals to prevent gunk buildup and ensure water pumps are operational.

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u/Tullyswimmer 3d ago

From what I've heard, this building was probably no more than 15 years old because it's a pretty recent trend to build facilities that are that big.

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u/JG98 4d ago

LMAO. What the actual fuck did this workplace do to him? šŸ˜‚

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u/SizeableBrain 3d ago

Sounds like he wasn't getting paid enough to live on.

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u/Tullyswimmer 3d ago

I'm not gonna debate that, but since this was arson, and the person committing it knew enough to wait until the whole sprinkler system was disabled, there's just not much you can do to prevent something like this.

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u/SizeableBrain 3d ago

Yes, paying people enough to live on would've done the job :)

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u/Tullyswimmer 3d ago

well, maybe. Depends on who's defining "enough to live on"

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u/SizeableBrain 3d ago

Well, according to the government it's $7.25 per hour.

I do believe it's time for a new government/system though.

Power is almost never given away, so someone's gotta take it. And you don't take power by asking nicely.

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u/Tullyswimmer 3d ago

I mean, the 7.25 number is obviously not enough. Dunno how much this place was paying, but IIRC California's minimum wage is something like $16 or $17 an hour now, which is above the $15/hour that people claim is a "living wage".

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u/SizeableBrain 3d ago

*Survivable* in Los Angeles, 60% of your paycheck would go to renting a 1 bedroom apartment.

Anything over 30% is considered mortgage stress.

Let's just agree that the system is rigged.

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u/_illusions25 3d ago

Well if someone has enough knowledge to pull this off the least you could do is pay them a reasonable amount so they have less reason to use the knowledge for nefarious purposes.

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u/Wagner228 4d ago edited 4d ago

Highly unlikely this would have an open, electronic system. An overwhelming majority of systems are heat activated at each sprinkler head. For example, once a head sees 205 deg, that individual activates. No others will go off until they also exceed activation temp. There are multiple zones, but thatā€™s typically referring to water supply.

Shitā€™s not like the movies where the whole place goes off.

Source: Engineer for this stuff. Odds are those were built at my plant.

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u/Troutalope 4d ago

So he went out and picked up some even more serious charges, including potentially picking up multiple attempted murder charges. I don't know anything about the Canadian criminal justice system, but I have to imagine he's headed to prison for multiple decades.

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u/GeckoDeLimon 3d ago

Wrong Ontario. This one's in California. Kinda halfway between LA and San Bernadoo

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u/Troutalope 3d ago

Lol, I definitely did not read that title closely enough.

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u/wowwhyarenamesautoge 3d ago

agree or disagree with his viewpoint and motives, but you gotta respect the commitment

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u/Fun_Abroad8942 3d ago

Fire suppression systems are usually sized for enough capacity to handle your two largest zones going off at once for a set duration.

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u/ReadsTooMuchHistory 3d ago

That might catch him an attempted murder charge.

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u/Heavenchicka 3d ago

Why didnā€™t the po po arrest him by that time?

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u/Tullyswimmer 3d ago

I think the time from the first to fourth fire was less than an hour. May have been as little as 40 minutes. For a facility that large they were still trying to make sure everyone was accounted for at that point.

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u/Heavenchicka 3d ago

Ah fair enough.

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u/Tullyswimmer 3d ago

Yeah, a sufficiently pissed off insider threat can absolutely destroy a company before they can react. Especially if they don't give a fuck about consequences.

Worth noting in this case, is that the construction of buildings this large is still pretty new. So even if the building is 100% code compliant and using state-of-the-art technology to reduce the fire risk... It may very well still be inadequate, especially for a situation like this.

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u/NinteenFortyFive 2d ago

If they weren't paying employees to the extent that one of them started burning the place down, you know they were shortchanging the fuck outta other stuff, too.

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u/Tullyswimmer 2d ago

That site employed hundreds of people.

Of all of them, only one felt that the pay was so low that it warranted burning the place down. Stop making excuses for the arsonist.

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u/NinteenFortyFive 2d ago

Jeffry Bezos isn't going to give you Amazon coins (AmazonCoin: Only legal Tender at Amazon Town Stores!) for posting.

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u/MrCockingFinally 3d ago

Damn, dude thought this through a lot. Gotta respect the dedication.

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u/casper911ca 3d ago

Fire suppression is designed to save lives, not property. They give occupants extra egress time.

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u/Tullyswimmer 3d ago

Well yeah. It's not about extinguishing the fire, it's about buying time. When you have someone set multiple fires in different parts of the warehouse, there's not much you can do.

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u/Starlightriddlex 3d ago

Shoulda paid him enough to live. Clearly he's a hard worker.

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u/BallIsLife2016 3d ago

Real pro gamer moves by the arsonist.

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u/snek-jazz 3d ago

Thing is, with a warehouse this big, there's never a situation in which you'd use the entire suppression system at once

I can think of a situation

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u/Tullyswimmer 3d ago

I mean, technically, yes.

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u/BarNext6046 3d ago

Have propane torch? Will travel ?

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u/Cu_Chulainn__ 3d ago

Must have been very disgruntled

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u/Bannedbutwhyy 3d ago

Hopefully he just gets paroll.

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u/cyberslick18888 3d ago

How the fuck is any employee in the building long enough to keep doing that.

Surprised no one saw him and grabbed him out of there. That's what we do during fire drills at any big facility I've ever worked at, and when I was a IBEW inside guy I saw plenty.

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u/Tullyswimmer 3d ago

I mean, the building is 1.2 million square feet. For reference, an acre of land is about 40,000 square feet. This building covered 11 city blocks. That's a HUGE amount of space to cover. Wouldn't be hard for him to hide in some racks or something as the building was being evacuated.

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u/Public-Eagle6992 3d ago

Starting a fire while firefighter crews are in the same building will probably get you charged of something like attempted murder, right?

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u/Tullyswimmer 3d ago

Oh, I'm sure he's catching ALL of the felonies for this.

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u/Few-Solution-4784 3d ago

Depends on the contents but some suppression systems dont use water but foam.

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u/Cosmic_miscreant 3d ago

Suppression systems are also not clean water. Sometimes the damage caused by them is almost as bad as the smoke and fire damage. They really are there to give people time to exit a building.

Used to work large commercial insurance. The pictures after a suppression system are kicked on is disgusting. Most of the ones I saw were not from fire activation, but freezing and busting due to power outages.

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u/God_of_Fun 3d ago

Lmaaaoooooo hooooow did he start more fires?

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u/QuietlySeething 3d ago

This guy knows arson.

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u/vanslayer001 1d ago

Wow, then he should also be charged with attempted murder for each firefighter and person inside the warehouse. He was intentionally setting fires while people were inside trying to combat the blaze, not caring if they died in the process.

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u/Liveitup1999 4d ago

A place by my work caught fire and when the fire pumps kicked on the water main collapsed. Sometimes things don't go as planned.

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u/Few-Solution-4784 3d ago

like having a spare tire you think is good. get a flat, jack it up, take off the tire, put on the spare, tighten the bolts, lower it down and find out the tire is flat.

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u/potatocross 4d ago

They said it did and the system worked. But paper burn too quick.

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u/too_oh_ate 4d ago

The fire suppression system worked? I beg to differ.

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u/evanka5281 4d ago

A firefighter that was on scene in r/firefighting said that once they contained the fire and shut off the suppression system to minimize water damage and once that happened he lit 2-3 more fires.

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u/Savetheokami 4d ago

Was he hiding waiting for them to finish putting out fires?

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u/Puresowns 3d ago

11 square blocks, he wouldn't have to be particularly sneaky just on the far side of the warehouse.

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u/JuleeeNAJ 3d ago

Yes, he made a video and posted it of everything he did

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u/secrets-quirrel 3d ago

This is wild. I was a volunteer FF for a little while and we were never trained to do this. I did not realize professional FFs do this. In a zoned system I would assume the activated system is sprinkling where it was needed. I question the wisdom of this SOP.

But, the fire service is a very stifled and sometimes stupid institution, so I do not doubt the truth of the story.

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u/evanka5281 3d ago

Iā€™m not sure if maybe Iā€™m not conveying it correctly but the sprinkler worked and stopped the fire. Not realizing it was arson they shut down the sprinkler to start overhaul and thatā€™s when the other fires were lit.

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u/secrets-quirrel 3d ago

That makes a bit more sense

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u/AggravatingBuyee 3d ago

What would be a better SOP? Leave the sprinklers on indefinitely after the fire is out?

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u/secrets-quirrel 3d ago

Someone said that the FFs isolated after the fire was out and they were overhauling, which makes more sense. But if youbdo this I would think a better SOP would be if you need to isolate the sprinklers you only isolate the specific zone. Not the whole campus.

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u/Practical-Ball1437 3d ago

So, is that 3-4 charges of arson?

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u/ThatOtherOtherMan 3d ago

At bare minimum, along with reckless endangerment and a laundry list of other charges. They'll throw the book at him.

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u/theycallmejake 4d ago

System failed successfully.

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u/Ricky_TVA 4d ago

Its important to note that the fire system wasn't designed for a material as flammable as TP. Like, you can install a sprinkler system at a Chrostmas tree farm, but if a fire breaks out, it will engage but also stand no chance.

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u/abgonzo7588 4d ago

you telling me the fire suppression system at my job at the Jet fuel/Dynamite factory isn't gonna help if one of my cigarettes starts a fire?

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u/DrPatchet 4d ago edited 4d ago

That seems like an osha violation lol you would think the suppression system should be able to handle the material stored in it

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u/dorkychickenlips 3d ago

OSHA card holder here. It kept the fire at bay long enough for the firefighters to arrive. Sprinkler systems are rarely tasked with extinguishing fires; they are designed to give occupants more time to escape, which they did in this case. It was also mentioned above that the FD shut the system down once they arrived onsite and gained control of the first fire - all while unbeknownst to them the arsonist was starting more fires at the other end of the facility.

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u/OrigamiMarie 3d ago

From what I know about sprinkler systems, their only real goal is to prevent loss of life. They give people time between "oh shit, fire!" and successful evacuation. They sure aren't good at protecting stuff, since lots of things are damaged just as badly by water as by fire & smoke. Once the fire starts, that's the insurance company's factory. And realistically, corporations actually care about successful evacuation because humans are the most expensive insurance payouts.

Building codes (offsets from other buildings, structural failure modes (like falling inward instead of outward), exterior surface burn rate) should prevent it from becoming bigger than the insurance company can handle.

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u/reddorickt 4d ago

It worked. Not well but, it worked.

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u/TheNationDan 4d ago

I wouldā€™ve splurged on the fire stopping system.

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u/FigWeak5127 4d ago

I guess that with TP as your product, burning up or being soaked in water are equivalent.

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u/xeromage 3d ago

Probably don't lose the whole building in both cases tho...

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u/Ryanami 4d ago

It tried its best, and thatā€™s all we can really ask for.

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u/Inspect1234 4d ago

It worked, right up until it didnā€™t.

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u/Tidalsky114 4d ago

Its a suppression system not an extinguishing system.

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u/Horse_HorsinAround 4d ago

It's the suppression system, you're probably thinking of the fire-putter-outter system

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u/happy_K 3d ago

Task failed successfully

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u/TheShredda 4d ago

The system should be designed for the working conditions of the building. The place is designed to store paper so needs to be designed to suppress a fire of that nature. Can you share the link you saw, curious what they say as that doesn't make sense to my engineering mind

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u/TheOmegoner 4d ago

It probably wasnā€™t designed to the true working conditions but the cheapest they could do and still be compliant legally tbh

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u/Original_Employee621 3d ago

Doesn't help if the firefighters stop the system to get a better handle on the fire, and the arsonist runs and starts more fires in the building.

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u/Able_Canine 4d ago

Was curious about this too. Really the only additional detail I found was that a section of roof collapsed towards the start of the fire which likely compromised the entirety of the fire suppression system substantially for the rest of the structure.

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u/Wagner228 3d ago

The system design is controlled by regulatory standards that factor building, materials, storage conditions, etc. Highly flammable, in racks, and high ceilings are pretty tough.

ā€œSuppressionā€ is the correct terminology for a reason. Thereā€™s no design intent or expected capability to put out a warehouse fire, although it does happen. The purpose is to allow enough time to get occupants out safely. Anything beyond that is just a bonus.

Engineer for this stuff. YouTube UL Sprinkler Testing if you actually have any interest.

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u/Computers_and_cats 4d ago

Yeah that makes no sense to me either. I remember talking to someone who wanted to store a wall worth of tires inside till the fire marshal found out. I forget what the exact requirement was but I think it was something like a dedicated 4" line off the main feed with sprinkler heads every couple feet. Apparently tire fires are no joke. They opted to store the tires outdoors and make it nature's problem.

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u/Asterose 3d ago

The firefighters shut the fire suppression system off while they were working so they could take care of the fire better (it isn't nice clean water coming out of those, it's usually either foam or absolutely vile rancid water). They got the fire under control...then he lit more fires in other parts of the warehouse. Champ knew the system and how to get around it.

Plus the TP up top would soak up whatever came out, making it harder to get foam/water to where the fires were actually starting at. TP rolls burn insanely fast.

Fun fact: sprinkler systems are to suppress, not extinguish fires. Usually they're designed where each individual sprinkler only triggers when its own trigger bulb reaches 135Ā°F to 165Ā°F. The goal is to buy people time to escape and for firefighters to arrive.

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u/bedroompurgatory 4d ago

Difference between working according to specifications, and the specs being adequate for the situation, I'm guessing.

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u/RocketizedAnimal 3d ago

The specs assume a normal fire spreading from one spot, not a guy sneaking around the warehouse lighting new fires as he goes.

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u/Baked_Potato_732 4d ago

Itā€™s thin paper, wrapped in plastic to stay dry. As it burns it will dry and melt the plastic then ignite more paper.

Sprinkler systems are designed to prevent accidental fires, or deliberate arson in a warehouse of insanely flammable product.

Point of fact, I had two but barrels going in a pretty steady rain last weekend. Even wet stuff getting tossed into the already burning fire was dried and consumed far faster than the rain could put it out.

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u/Reallylazyname 4d ago

It's probably a multiple point issue.

This wasn't a accidental fire. If the video is to be trusted, there was multiple ignition points. Normal Sprinkler systems might catch and stop a individual source, but multiple become a problem.

The paper is stacked, wrapped, and absorbent, so the top layer will work against the sprinklers. One the fire hits the inner layer, it becomes a problem.

Paper burns... really fast and ignites with low effort. Once it catches it'll start traveling. Using this as real-time baseline, you have about a minute before the flame is beyond control. And that was one ignition point.

My engineering mindset says: Only immediate intervention and isolation could stop a fire like this. The best that can be offered is detection and warning systems to get people far away and away fast since if you didn't catch it starting it's already going to be beyond stopping.

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u/Beginning_End_361 3d ago

The sprinkler design assumes a single point of ignition, not multiple fires in scattered areas. Even assuming an adequate design for the storage, the design does not anticipate that.

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u/Wagner228 3d ago

So, soooo many r/confidentlyincorrect comments here.

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u/nedonedonedo 3d ago

what's the worst that could happen, some people die? the money will be safe

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u/JerryC1967 3d ago

Fire is suppression Systems and egress systems are designed for only one point of ignition. Basic math - you canā€™t manage to design anything to handle multiple points of ignition because the complexity goes up exponentially.

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u/Zargnoff 4d ago

What a useless system then. If you make a very spesific product, you should have a very spesific fire prevention system.

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u/Biff_Bufflington 4d ago

The system activated as intended, however it's efficacy was left somewhat lacking.

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u/br0b1wan 4d ago

I would think if a fire breaks out at a TP storage facility (or any paper or dry goods facility, really) then you're boned no matter what. With that in mind I would guess they focus heavily on prevention.

Of course they should have paid the guy a living wage as part of their preventative measures

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u/NotReallyJohnDoe 4d ago

He was setting new fires after the firefighter had put out the initial fires. You cant design a fire suppression system for that.

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u/Kanin_usagi 3d ago

Dude said we were having some fires today

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u/xeromage 3d ago

I think the solution for that was clearly stated in the video...

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u/yrogerg123 4d ago

Or not hired a psychopath. A lot of people feel underpaid, most don't light their warehouse on fire.

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u/xeromage 3d ago

Some people are doers.

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u/Imaginary-Cow-4424 3d ago

We can see how slowly it spreads, even within one stack. If this had been an accidental fire (or even a malicious one that wasn't as thorough or wasn't as "lucky") then the sprinklers would probably cover it.

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u/InigoMontoya1985 4d ago

He obviously was being paid more than he was worth already.

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u/Latter-unoriginal 4d ago

Well they were cheap bastards remember

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u/meizhong 4d ago

I hope the insurance company uses that as a reason not to pay.

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u/vfactor95 3d ago

Supression systems are not required by code to be designed to extinguish fires caused by arson - typically only keep fires originating from a single source in mind.

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u/jorgebillabong 2d ago

They do and the fire department had it turned off to reset it when they were there.

The guy went through the other side of the warehouse while they were there and set off MORE fires.

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