Courtesy of ScienceDaily.com

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) fire protection engineers turned an abandoned New York City (NYC) brick high-rise into a seven-story fire laboratory last month to better understand the fast-moving spread of wind-driven flames, smoke and toxic gases through corridors and stairways of burning buildings. The experiments on NYC's Governors Island, conducted in partnership with the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) and New York's Polytechnic University, examined the effectiveness of firefighting tactics such as the use of positive pressure ventilation fans, wind control devices and hose streams to control or suppress deadly heat and smoke from the wind-driven fires.

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