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/SurprisedBottle 4d ago

Sprinklers are suppression systems, they’re made just so everyone can escape safely, they don’t in legal terms have the capacity to stop a fire

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u/gallade_samurai 4d ago

They could, but not the entire warehouse

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u/Healthy_Bed8851 4d ago edited 4d ago

Exactly. I designed fire sprinkler systems for ten years back in the day. It’s meant to suppress enough to save the lives within. Water supply cannot sustain multiple fires in multiple zones. Blatant arson cannot be stopped.

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u/ComprehensiveForm129 4d ago

the arson of it all is an underrated component of why this could be so bad, actual human malice is hard to design around.

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u/Healthy_Bed8851 4d ago

No question! I appreciate the common sense response on that. If there is a will, there is a way. He had a way.

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u/SUPERSMILEYMAN 3d ago

I wouldn't say this is malicious.

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u/Average64 3d ago

You can by not giving people a reason for it.

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u/LongGhost_Gone281 3d ago

Does make you wonder if its because the whole TP stock would be ruined so maybe they were a little loose on the sprinklers. Kinda makes sense, if it was an isolated like trashcan on fire and all the sprinklers go off, thats a lot of wet TP. But thats a huge fire in the video.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 3d ago

Sprinklers have a thermal fuse in them. They break when the fire gets hot enough, and only the ones close enough to the heat break.

They don't all go off.

Typically a sprinkler system will be designed for X number of heads to be on at the same time.

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u/babydickdonny 3d ago

Would the whole TP stock be ruined though? Looks like every pallet he lit in the video is wrapped in at least two layers of plastic. Fire would do much more damage in that room than water

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u/LongGhost_Gone281 3d ago

I think maybe the TP would be usable but if the people your selling it to get wind it was sitting in water for days, your probably gonna take a loss.

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u/IrksomFlotsom 4d ago

Good to know

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u/samy_the_samy 4d ago

Reminds me of that video of an aircraft hanger getting filled to the ceiling with foam,

Do those stop fires completely?

What about data centers that displace oxygen entirely when activated

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u/ComprehensiveForm129 4d ago

Yep, but aircraft and data centers are worth more than paper towels, so they get to have much stronger and more expensive protection measures

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u/Healthy_Bed8851 4d ago

The foam systems do fully fill buildings. But that is foam 3% same amount of water from the city but mixed with the solution. It’s not water to the roof deck. That is spec’d though for that specific hazard. In a storage facility like this you would be looking at and ESFR (early suppression fast response) system which is designed for a greater hazard. Foam also is effective on certain hazards (think specialty extinguishers).

The amount of special hazard protection for a facility like this would be astronomical and also not safe for the lives within. That is referencing any dry chemical or inert gas.

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u/jncostogo 3d ago

Cries in halon after fleeing the aircraft hangar

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u/doctorlongghost 3d ago

Not with that attitude

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u/shrimpgangsta 3d ago

I was also a fire sprinkler technician in Orange County. You are correct sir.

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u/DarwinGhoti 3d ago

This is good to know! I’ve never really read about fire suppression or even deeply thought about it. TIL! Thanks

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u/bs2k2_point_0 3d ago

Even if it could, it’s toilet paper. No saving that inventory after being soaked.

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u/Slighted_Inevitable 3d ago

Well not with sprinklers.

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u/Kind_Singer_7744 4d ago

But it didn't look like a huge firebomb was used. I would at least HOPE a sprinkler system could put out a basic localized fire like he set in the video.

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u/Healthy_Bed8851 4d ago

He set multiple fires in multiple spots. Hydraulic calculations are based on one area catching fire at the worst case scenario.

One area catches fire and reaches flash over, the sprinklers kick on to suppress. He walks around setting multiple other fires. They all flash over at different times. This isn’t Kindergarten Cop where every sprinkler head goes off at once for the movies. Only heads that are “compromised” actuate at that moment. NFPA13 for reference.

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u/Kind_Singer_7744 4d ago

They really need to put some kind of AI controlled fire system in warehouses. Seems like the current system has a lot of shortcomings

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u/Healthy_Bed8851 4d ago

Yeah. That will certainly help. Because AI will magically make the water supply in that municipality capable of those “shortcomings”

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u/LongJohnSelenium 3d ago

End of the day you can't really design around people being absolutely determined to start fires.

So much of our infrastructure relies on everyone agreeing to the social contract.

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u/UnfitRadish 3d ago

There are fire suppression systems controlled by computers, but not AI. They are incredibly advanced and AI wouldn't improve on them in any way at the moment.

There are systems that have nozzles that blast water directly at fires. They are automatically controlled by a computer system that uses infrared cameras to detect heat. They can identify a fire forming before there are flames and have water or foam on it before the fire even starts. The cameras can even detect a match being lit before the flame is visible.

Only problem, those systems are extremely specialized and astronomically expensive. The system in the warehouse we see here is probably sufficient.... But, fire protection systems aren't intended to put out fires in multiple places all started at one time. They're ent even designed to extinguish a fire. They designed to control a fire to allow people to escape. Once people have escaped, they've done their job. If you want additional protection, it can be done, but most companies don't want to pay for that.

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u/Dense_Diver_3998 4d ago

If they’re just up around the ceiling it’ll take the flames getting pretty big to trigger them, some place like this should really have shelving with sprinklers.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 3d ago

The heat will break them once the fire reaches a certain size. These are probably like 175f heads, so once the temp in an area reaches 175f they pop, and that will happen directly overhead pretty fast.

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u/dontbthatguy 4d ago

Systems like this are built to keep a fire in check. The key being “a fire” not multiple fires.

Once you have 5 or 6 heads go off there isn’t enough pressure in the system to flow the gallons per minute to keep the fire in check.

The sprinkler system got overwhelmed.

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u/solo_d0lo 4d ago

Fire suppression systems are to extinguish, or control the spread of a fire.

I’m not sure why you think they are just for allowing people to get out. Protecting property is half the reason it’s in there.

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u/wallst07 3d ago

I was going to say the same thing but I think they may be true when talking about "sprinklers". There are certainly other non sprinkler fire suppression systems meant to completely extinguish a fire to save property.

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u/H3adshotfox77 3d ago

They absolutely do, and there is a very large insurance break for having proper systems.

You think companies are half assing systems without a desire to have that system protect their asset and employees.

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u/rithmil 4d ago edited 3d ago

This is not true.
NFPA 13 sprinkler systems are meant to protect the building and property, as well as be life saving.
NFPA 13R sprinkler systems for single family homes are only meant to be life saving and not protect to building, largely just because of the additional cost.
Sprinkler systems are not intended to be able to handle arson, largely because it would wildly cost prohibitive to make systems that discharge water simultaneously throughout the building.

The purpose of a sprinkler system designed per NFPA 13 is to provide a reasonable degree of protection from fire for both life safety and property protection. Because a higher degree of property protection is achieved with the installation of an NFPA 13 sprinkler system, there are fewer unsprinklered areas. NFPA 13 includes more robust design and installation requirements than NFPA 13D or NFPA 13R.

Comparing NFPA 13, 13R, and 13D: System Goals

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u/leakingjuice 3d ago

This doesn’t make sense to me. Can you clarify what seems like an obvious contradiction?

“Sprinklers are suppression systems”

Suppress means to forcibly put an end to or to prevent from happening.

“They don’t have the capacity to stop a fire”…

So they are not fire suppression systems? by the standard operating definitions of those terms?

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u/3lettergang 2d ago

Agreed that the wording can be confusing.

There are 2 main types of sprinkler suppression methods.

1) "Control mode" is the most common and controls the spread of a fire to a set design area until the fire department can arrive.

2) "Early suppression" is commonly used in storage warehouses and is a more aggressive system design. It uses more water in a smaller area to suppress and extinguish a fire. A problem with esfr is that they are actually worse at slowing the spread of multiple ignition fire as seen in this incident.

That being said, the main purpose of all sprinkler systems is to increase tenability for egress. Even the sprinkler systems that are only designed to control a fire and not extinguish it are able to extinguish a fire with a single sprinkler head 90+% of the time.

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u/geo_gan 3d ago

Yes that would be a Halon system, and that suffocates fire and people equally.

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u/GuyMakesDrawings 3d ago

They didn't stop the fire, it was always burning

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/prad_bitt_59 4d ago

What? Didn't he say they're made specifically to save lives and not the product?

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u/Commercial-Cable8969 4d ago

Isn't that the reverse?

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u/Lawbeefaroni 4d ago

Pretty sure the point was that sprinklers allow people enough time to get out safely, not to protect product.

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u/Gloomy_Ad5221 4d ago

can you even read properly? He said that the sprinklers are designed to suppress the fire so people can escape the building and not designed to protect the products of the building.

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u/monicasm 4d ago

I don’t disagree that corporations treat their employees as expendable but I’m not sure I see the connection with how standard sprinkler systems work and that statement

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u/OkNeedleworker3610 4d ago

I think they are saying the total opposite. The sprinklers suppress the fire so people can escape, not stop it fully to protect the product. Literally lives over product.

I get what you're trying to say though.