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THE LIES THAT KILLED TEN THOUSAND CHILDREN

THE GREAT BULK OF THE FIRE DEATHS AND INJURIES ARE DUE TO CALCULATED, PLANNED, DELIBERATE UNETHICAL OPERATIONS WITHIN THE FIRE CODE SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES. YES, FIRE CODE CORRUPTION IS THE FUNDAMENTAL CAUSE OF NEARLY ALL FIRE DEATHS TODAY.

The primary reason why fires kill in the home is because smoldering fires, which can turn into hot flaming fires, fill a room with deadly toxic fumes. A fast-growing flaming fire can grow quickly from a smoldering fire to a killing size completely undetected by those outside that fire room. Fire within one room can grow quietly to what we call a "Room Flashover" condition, at which point every combustible within the room flashes. Then, because the "explosion" in fire size creates an overpressure condition within the fire room, hot combustion gases will pour out of that room at temperatures of more than five times the temperature of boiling water. The smoke will likely be thick, jet black and blinding. The toxic combustion gases including carbon monoxide can drop a grown man before he reaches an exit door. These fire gases will be so hot that they can literally peel flesh off the bones. It is rare when a body is carried out of a home that does not show some major heat damage.

There is an easy solution to fire deaths within homes. It is to install reliable fire detectors of the correct type so that when a fire is still smoldering and easy to snuff out, or to escape from, an emergency warning will sound. Fire is like a tiger cub. When it is small it is not yet a threat to life and it is easy to kill. So, the primary reason why fire is deadly (especially to children) is because ineffective ionization smoke detectors, with failure rates exceeding 50 percent, have been marketed to more than 90% of American homes.

NEARLY ALL FIRE DEATHS ARE THE RESULT OF FAILURE TO RECEIVE A TIMELY WARNING WHILE THERE IS STILL TIME TO ESCAPE. THE DECEPTIVEMARKETING OF UNRELIABLE IONIZATION "SMOKE" DETECTORS IS THE CAUSE OF THE DELAYED WARNINGS.

It is difficult to believe that code dishonesty could be the root cause of most fire deaths. But it's true and the proofs are now available and posted on the Internet. Indeed, live fire tests, conducted within real buildings, have confirmed that home fire detectors of the ionization type, marketed for more than four decades as a "smoke" detector, are so ineffective and unreliable, that they endanger life. By promoting inadequate and often deadly smoke detectors for homes, real and reliable detection devices that should have saved lives were not readily available to the public.

The ionization-type "smoke" detector was proven to be ineffective and a threat to human life more than 25 years ago.  I submit the following quotes to confirm this.

U.S. Fire Administration: "We put 50 million smoke detectors in buildings in America in a two year period and our fire loss and death rate goes up. We're having a little trouble explaining these things", Gordon Vickery, former head of the U.S. Fire Administration. Source: Fire engineering magazine, September 1980.

Fire Chief Magazine: "Smoke detectors were an unknown term to 99 percent of the population ten years ago. Today millions of family dwellings have them, yet there is no reduction in loss of life from fire. The paradox has not been explained" Source: Fire Chief Magazine, January 1980.

Fire Chief, City of Los Angeles: "A startling fact has been disclosed . . . John C. Gerard, Chief of Los Angeles Fire Department cited national statistics showing battery powered smoke detectors have a 50 to 80 percent failure rate" Source: Fire Control Direst, Vol. 6, No. 10.

National Fire Protection Association (NFPA): "Residential fire death rate increases 20 percent over 1984 residential death rate with over 100 million smoke detectors installed in American Homes." Source: NFPA Fire Journal, November 1986, page 44.

International Association of Fire Chiefs: "The subcommittee is concerned with some smoke detector advertisements. The subcommittee felt that some advertising claims were too strong and, in some cases, deceptive and misleading to the public, resulting in a false sense of security." "A full system of multiple photoelectric smoke detectors, supported by heat detectors, affords the best protection for a family against the threat of fire." Source: Residential Smoke Alarm Report, published by the International Association of Fire Chiefs, September, 1980.

It all began during the early 1960s when I was named chairman of four different fire detection codes of the National Fire Protection Association. The NFPA creates nearly all of the fire codes that are enforced by your local fire department. When I assumed responsibility for the fire detection codes I realized that homes (where 95 percent of all fire deaths involving building fires occur) were totally devoid of fire warning equipment. So, I immediately initiated the writing of a fire detection code for dwellings. With the best and most knowledgeable people in the field, we had a new code up for adoption at the 1966 NFPA National Convention. That code required heat detectors throughout a home and smoke detectors wherever there was a serious risk of a smoldering fire. Generally this meant bedrooms and where upholstered furniture would be subject to a smoldering fire. Heat detectors were the superior and near-100% reliable device for warning of the very dangerous flaming fire.  Somewhere the industry got off track and replaced heat sensing with ionization sensing.  A smoldering fire can produce smoke and toxic gases without creating significant heat, so ionization smoke detectors were also recommended, however they are ineffective in detecting the fine smoke particles of a smoldering fire.  Now that exhaustive tests have proven that ionization detectors simply do not recognize smoldering fires in a timely fashion, it has become apparent that the only combi-units that function in a timely fashion, in all fire conditions, contain both photoelectric and heat sensors.  Photoelectric sensors can detect the fine particles of a smoldering fire and heat sensors can detect fast flaming fires.

The newly created NFPA Standard No. 74 defined a reliable fire detection system for homes for the first time ever. As the initiator of this code, I believed that eventually fire deaths would be nearly eliminated. If promptly warned of a fire at a very early stage, the occupants would either quickly snuff out the still-tiny fire (before outside help was needed), or leave the home safely. However, although I did not realize it at the time, by opening a new potential multi-billion dollar market for home fire detectors, I brought the wolves and their corrupt allies into the game. The ghouls, who envisioned profits where I saw lives at risk, decided they could capture that new huge home market for fire detectors.

Devious and clever business people began peddling a device containing the radioactive material Americium 241, which emits the nucleus of the helium atom (an Alpha particle) 37,000 times per second. This radiation causes an electrical current to flow across the detection chamber. When an enormous number of near atomic sized particles (say billions within a cubic inch) enter the detection chamber the current is diminished and an alarm sounds. The type of particulate that will cause the device to sound can be produced by toasting bread, overheated roasts and a steamy shower. Unfortunately real (visible) smoke will not cause the device to sound because smoke consists of combustion particles too large and too few to interfere with the current flow. However, the clever and unscrupulous promoters created a specific test that produced the “right particulate” to make it sound and then advertised that it would detect every type of fire "before you can see the smoke or flames". The rigged tests and false performance claims were backed by pseudo science. These phony performance claims created the idea that a wonderful new solution to fire detection had been invented.  But, it was all an incredible fraud. The manufacturers conned the fire chiefs and then enlisted firefighters to sell the things during their numerous "non- duty” days.

Nearly all fire department officials are firefighters who rose through the ranks. They are not engineers, scientists or technically sophisticated people. Their "expertise" is in the form of codes and standards to be enforced. The NFPA creates nearly all the codes that fire officials enforce. The committee members that create the codes consist mainly of representatives of businesses that make money from the fire problem. Underwriters' Laboratories tests and "certifies" the approved equipment such as fire hose, fire pumps, extinguishers, building materials etc. So, a fire inspector will do two things, interpret the NFPA code and confirm that the system or device is “UL Listed”. If it meets code and is UL "certified", then it is OK to the fire inspector and plan reviewer. That is how "fire safety" is applied in America.

The public believes that UL and NFPA are humanitarian operations saving us from the fire peril. Actually, they are businesses selling services and they need money to survive. The businesses that profit from the fire protection industry deliver the necessary funding to the NFPA and UL. UL employs inadequate and even fallacious testing to "certify" the efficacy of the ionization sensing devices that now “protect” our children.

The UL Label on that so called "smoke" detector convinced the fire chiefs that the device was reliable. Of course UL also profited from the marketing of the so-called smoke detectors. And, for years the con men selling the ineffective smoke detectors bought full page ads within the NFPA Fire Journal. It would be no exaggeration to say that UL and NFPA got into bed with the manufacturers and helped deceive both the fire chiefs and the public.

The residential fire detection code that I pushed through to adoption mainly relied on the extremely reliable heat detectors to warn of the most dangerous type of fire, the fast growing flaming fire. The NFPA offered the chairmanship of the code I created to an administrative level fire engineer within the federal government (the National Bureau of Standards - NBS). There was a proviso, however. That federal engineering manager agreed to rewrite the NFPA 74 code to essentially kick the heat detectors out of the code while opening the door wide for smoke detectors. He proceeded to do just that. Then, later, he was assigned to be the federal monitor of a fire test program called the Dunes Tests. This test program, beginning in 1974, involved 76 live fire tests in real homes. In the event that the Dunes Tests revealed that the ionization device was as defective as it was, there would have been major repercussions. By 1974 thousands of deaths and injuries had already occurred within ionization detector protected homes. Since UL had "approved" the defective device, UL people involved might have faced criminal charges and jail sentences for negligence.  However, three of the four test engineers assigned to the Dunes Tests, including the lead engineer, were UL employees.

The average time for that "super fast" ionization detector to respond to smoldering fires (during Phase 1 of the tests) was 65.8 minutes. The ionization device had 162 chances to operate during the smoldering fire tests. Exactly zero devices operated within 10 minutes of the fire initiation. Only 28 times out of 162 chances did the device operate within a half hour. The device also operated erratically during flaming fire tests. As for testing heat detectors, during 75 of the 76 fire tests, either the engineers did not install heat detectors in the fire rooms or, when installed, the fires were so small that the ceiling temperatures failed to reach the operating temperature of the detectors (135 degrees F).  Exactly one test - only one - was conducted with the heat detectors in the fire room, with a fire that created a ceiling temperature above 135 degrees F during the first ten minutes of ignition. The heat detector operated perfectly during that one “slow-growth” flaming fire. Talk about rigging a test program! I have to admit the federal and UL engineers were geniuses at the game. When I received that incredibly corrupt Dunes Tests report, I analyzed it and then wrote my 1976 report, The Smoke Detector Fraud.  Then I had 3000 copies printed and sent them to fire engineers and fire officials across the country.

My first exposé of this fraud plus many additional reports, letters and talks before fire officials finally created concerns about the ionization device. That's when the fire officials began to question the Dunes Report and the efficacy of the device being sold (see the above quotes). During the late 1970s the fire officials in California, referred to as the Cal-Chiefs, realized that the ionization detector had serious flaws. So, the Los Angeles Fire Department, with help from the IAFC, conducted a comprehensive series of fire tests. These Cal-Chiefs tests put the lie to the Dunes Tests. The fire chiefs concluded that the ionization device had been falsely advertised, that it would have a 50 to 80 percent failure rate in the field and that it was not fit to be installed to protect life in homes. But the chiefs were no match for the scientists, engineers and the ghouls who controlled the codes and the research money. Pressure from the NBS (later named the National Institute of Standards and Technology - NIST) forced the L.A. Fire Department to bury that report. The Cal-Chiefs Test Report of the late 1970s was "buried", never to surface again.

The ionization type smoke detector was first marketed during the mid 1960s. By the time the Cal-Chiefs tests were run in 1978, the number of deaths and injuries due to “failures to warn” were already into the tens of thousands. Most fire officials, the NFPA, UL and the federal agencies, including people within the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), were promoting the device. Many bureaucrats within government realized that if the truth surfaced they could be in deep trouble. The campaign to hide the facts intensified. For many years I was a lone voice crying in the wilderness. To buck the fire regulatory system can be very damaging to one’s career - and bankbook. So, it was prudent to go with the flow. But I never lost sight of the fact that kids were being burned by the thousands. So I persevered.

Finally two men outside of the United States, Adrian Butler in Australia and Karl Westwell in New Zealand, read some of my many reports. My reports confirmed what they were already concluding overseas. Since the regulatory ghouls that controlled the ball game in the U.S. had little if any power over there, these men were able to gain new and honest testing of that unreliable device in Australia. The results shocked and startled the Australian Standards Committee members there. Based on the new and honest testing, the fire officials in Australia published a paper confirming that the ionization device is a threat to life. So, after more than four decades of burning the kids while deceiving the public relative to the fundamental cause of the “failures to warn”, the truth is finally emerging. Now similar tests are being conducted in the U.S.  Hopefully, the ghouls who profited, as the kids were burned alive, will finally be made to answer for their misdeeds.

Please visit www.WTHR.com, which is the TV station web site in Indianapolis, Indiana. Investigative reporter Bob Segal and the State Fire Marshal of Indiana, Roger Johnson, ran fire tests that everyone who respects life should see. Jennifer Kraus of News Channel 5 in Nashville, TN has interviewed fire survivors who lost loved ones when their ionization sensing devices failed to sound.  Representatives of the Tennessee State Fire Marshals’ office and the State Legislature were astonished at the results of the tests run there.  Russell Ashe, Lieutenant on the Barre City, Vermont Fire Department helped carry four dead children and their mother out of a home. Now Barre City has its own test results and is alerting the Vermont public to the dangers.   Pending legislation in the state of Vermont will ban ionization and require photoelectric smoke detectors in all new construction, and require the retrofitting of photoelectric smoke detectors in all homes being resold.

I’d be remiss if I did not mention Joseph M. Fleming, Deputy Fire Chief of Boston, MA for the many years of his own time and money spent advocating the banning of ionization smoke detectors and replacing them with photoelectric smoke detectors. Chief Fleming feels strongly that combining photoelectric sensors with ionization sensors as a combi-unit does not solve the problems of false alarms and is simply a face saving move on the part of some manufacturers.

The organization within Australia that finally moved the exposé into high gear is the World Fire Safety Foundation (WFSF). There is an enormous amount of factual information relative to this ongoing public endangerment published on its web site. See the information and the fire tests now available and you will immediately become an advocate for recalling those children-killing devices.

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