Posted on 03/16/2002 4:49:29 PM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
(Syracuse-AP) -- State Senator Nancy Larraine Hoffmann is sponsoring a bill to require a sign near the front door of every home built with trusses, so firefighters can take precautions.
Fire officials say wooden floor trusses burn faster than solid joists.
They say that's what led to the floor collapse that killed two central New York firemen last week.
I'm all for protecting firemen, but do we really need another government regulation, in NY or elsewhere?
Do the truss police show up, inspect your home and slap the sign on? Or do you have to hire a home inspector and take the day off to find out? And what if you don't have the sign up? Do the truss police send you to prison, are you sued civilly for any injuries or can you be found guilty of criminally negligent homocide if a fireman dies in your home and your sign wasn't there?
This is the kind of nonsense one gets when our elected officials make so much money and spend so much time in apartments at the capitol: they forget what its like to be a middle class homeowner.
New York runs on regulations and licenses. I never saw the like of it. What a place.
The only thing this proposed law would really do is make money for the sign makers...
This is a joke. Buildings are designed to meet fire ratings which are calculated by the amount of protective covering (plaster, sheet rock, ...) on the structural components, by the type of structural materials, by numbers of expected occupants, by numbers of stories, and by firefighter acessibility around the building. The many types of building materials and assemblies (different ways to put materials together) are tested and evaluated to national standards. A system has to meet a performanced standard. So a truss system has to be protected to last as long as a joist system.
The real problem are the changes that homeowners make sometimes unknownly when renovating their property without complying with building codes. I have seen properties where homeowners have removed load bearing walls and god only knows what still holds up the floor.
The above law will not save any lives.
Draft (fire storm) is the only reason a truss system would burn faster than solid joists.....
With the overly hyped, elevated status of a "fireman" at this time the punisment could be even worse than you descricbe....it could be a hate crime.
Structural systems are tested in laboratories subjected to standards. With floors, a system has to carry a specified weight for a specified time. The result is for example, a one hour rated floor has to pass all the requirements for a one hour floor no matter what it is made of. If what you mean by "failing faster as a structural element" that the truss system does not carry the weight as long as a joist system, then the two are not equvalent. This is a misapplication in the testing or design but not a fault of using trusses. Manufactures design their systems to the bone so their system just passes the test. If trusses are failing faster than equivalently rated floors then the fault is where -- in the testing where someone cheated, lack of enforcement by building inspectors to see that properly rated floors are built for the right circustances, or the way builders apply the system not installing them using materials and details assumed in the test? Passing a law to tell the fire department to expect buldings to be labeled for their safety does not correct any of the other possible problems.
I have not heard of any firefighter deaths in Massachusetts from truss floors. The last major disaster with firefighters dying was in Worcester where three pairs of firefighters went into a burning abandoned, warehouse one pair after another to save two vagrants who actually were not in the building. To me, it would make more sense to pass a law to prevent firefighters from going into burning buildings to rescue vagrants in abandoned buildings. They should concentrate on containing the fire so it doesn't spread to the rest of the city. I'm sure the usual rabble would scream racism, classism, and the like throwing common sense out the window. That's what really irks me about the New York example.
How large does the lettering have to be? And what if the house burns at night and the sign can't been seen in the dark? Shall we have another law that says the signs have to be lit? And what if the sign burns up before the fire department gets there? Is that an additional offense against the homeowner?
Now there is a good idea!!
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