In the most wide-ranging response so far to The Station fire, a national fire-protection group has approved all seven fire code changes that were proposed to make nightclubs, bars and discotheques across the country safer.
Going well beyond the tough new fire safety law enacted in Rhode Island several weeks ago, the National Fire Protection Association's Standards Council overwhelmingly voted to require fire sprinklers in every new club serving 50 or more patrons, and in every existing club serving 100 or more patrons.
The new Rhode Island law requires sprinklers for clubs serving 150 or more. But it also requires the state to adopt the NFPA safety code, so the new national standards may go into effect here as well unless the General Assembly objects.
The NFPA also approved more safety inspections, mandatory crowd-management training and limits to standing-room only crowds.
The NFPA's Standards Council approved the emergency amendments to its national safety codes during a telephone conference call on Friday. The decisions were made public Saturday.
The code amendments will go into effect in 20 days. They are part of a model life safety code that has been adopted by 35 states, including most of New England. States can choose to adopt the new national codes or not, but NFPA staff say the codes will certainly be picked up by many localities.
"This is pretty dramatic," NFPA spokeswoman Margie Coloian said yesterday. "But these were extraordinary times."
Arthur E. Cote, the NFPA's executive vice president, called the changes a major overhaul of the nation's fire codes, Coloian said. She said he compared the changes to those that followed other dramatic, historic fires, such as the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston that killed 491 people or the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in 1977 that killed 164 people.
The Station fire in February killed 100 people and injured more than 200. There were no sprinklers at The Station because the building was exempted under the state's grandfather provisions.
At first, some fire experts wondered whether the disaster would trigger any fire code changes because it appeared to result from such obvious violations of existing codes.
It's generally agreed the speed and ferocity of the fire were caused by the use of pyrotechnic devices in a room with walls that were improperly covered with a highly flammable polyurethane foam.
But in an emotional hearing in March and two meetings of the NFPA's Technical Committee on Places of Assembly that followed, fire experts insisted that greedy club owners, intoxicated patrons, loud music and poor lighting all raise safety issues that cry out for stricter fire codes -- particularly mandates for automatic sprinklers.
The technical committee proposed an unusually long list of fire code improvements in recent weeks. One member, John Lake, chief of the Marion County Fire Rescue in Ocala, Fla., argued that because fire inspection bureaus have been cut back around the country, the one good way to compensate is to mandate sprinklers.
Still, no one was confident that the Standards Council would uphold the technical committee's recommendations when it met last week.
One technical committee member, Jim Messersmith, of the Portland Cement Association in Virginia, voted against every proposal, saying they amounted to a free-for-all as a result of just two incidents, The Station fire in February and the Chicago crowd crush incident a few days earlier.
And another NFPA committee that reviews new code amendments to judge how they relate to other codes, recommended against rushing to adopt the new codes.
In addition, the technical committee didn't complete its balloting on the issues until after the Standards Council concluded its recent meetings in Portland, Ore.
When the technical committee's balloting was completed, it reflected overwhelming support for all seven measures. The Standards Council reconvened by telephone.
Casey C. Grant, the council's secretary, said the council dismissed the objections raised by the correlation committee and had little difficulty in concluding that the new codes should be approved.
The new or amended codes in addition to the sprinkler requirements:
Reduce from 1,000 to 250 the crowd size that would require special safety evaluations of venues.
Require trained crowd managers for any gathering of 250 or more, down from 1,000.
Mandate that building owners inspect their exits and keep records of their condition every day they are open to the public.
Prohibit standing-room-only venues of 250 or more, down from 1,000 or more, unless special safety inspections are done first.
