Online News-NIST Fire Data/Simulations Aid Chicago Fire Investigation
NIST committee finds that the installation of automatic sprinklers at Chicago's Cook County Administration Building would likely have controlled and probably limited the spread of a fire that killed six people on Oct. 17, 2003.
Reprinted from the Oct. 14, 2004, issue of "NIST TechBeat," the National Institute of Standards and Technology's biweekly newsletter.
Had automatic sprinklers been present in a storage room in Chicago's Cook County Administration Building on Oct. 17, 2003, they likely would have controlled and probably limited the spread of a fire that killed six people. That's the conclusion recently reached by NIST fire researchers that provided technical support to the Illinois governor's select panel investigating the events that took place on the 12th floor of the 35-story Cook County facility.