... when the fire was still in that room-closet, could the outcome have been very different, or not?
If a private venture fails it's closed down. If a government venture fails it's expanded. M Friedman
It's a good and interesting question. Possibly the tower would still be an inferno. I'm not a fireman. Or an arsonist. Or a pyromaniac.
shareWhat you're forgetting is that wasn't the only place where a fire broke out. Remember Roberts line to Duncan, "If that was caused by fluky wiring, we could have fires breaking out all over here!"
shareThat whole scene raises questions.
For starters, the fire ignites in the afternoon but isn't discovered until the door is opened later in the evening. Either the fire would've burned itself out after consuming all the fuel in the storage room long before, or -far more likely- it would have erupted out far earlier. At the very least, someone would've detected it. Even if the automatic sensors were down, someone would've smelled smoke as there were building personnel working on that floor during the day.
As well, once it broke out we see a building employee fighting the flames with a hose from an emergency standpipe. He seems to have it reasonably contained as it's still limited to the storage room and he's spraying water into the relatively small space. Roberts even concedes to Duncan that it seems to be "under control". Albeit, one has to concede that Roberts isn't a trained firefighter. So, to his untrained observation it may look under control a trained firefighter may have said differently. However, the situation didn't look too bad then; as it was in one space, water was being poured in and the SFFD was due to arrive very soon. Yet, by the time the first engine crews get hose teams to that floor it appears to be out of control. What happened? Did it break through somewhere else on the floor? Did the man working the hose get overcome by smoke (lacking SCBA gear) and have to retreat, allowing the fire to gain a foothold outside the room?
We never see the fire situation on the 81st floor going from "serious but manageable" to "out of control" by the time the fire department arrives.
It sounds like you're suggesting that the scenario of a fire reaching unmanageable proportions without the people there detecting any indication of it is possible. I think you may have a point. I'd love to have an expert weigh in on these questions.
Evacuation Com
Well, I've been a volunteer firefighter (interior and exterior qualified) for over 25 years, if that's of any help. I'm no professional but we do get the exact same training, just not as much practice as the pros, and I've been in a few fires (though I'm not in an area with highrises).
The answer is, absolutely, a fire could burn for hours without being detected. As long as there's oxygen and combustible materials it will burn. Whether it's detected is purely a matter of chance; if no one's around, obviously it could go unseen for a long time. I've personally experienced this sort of thing several times.
The scenario in TTI, concerning that one storeroom where the first fire started, is certainly possible, though you'd think being on a floor with at least some people on it that someone would have smelled it long before. (If I recall 81 is a residential floor but it's unclear whether anyone has moved in there yet.) Today there'd be smoke detectors, though if their wiring was bad they'd be useless. But the entire building didn't catch fire from that one little room. As another poster has reminded us, Roberts tells Duncan that if that fire was the result of "fluky wiring" they could have fires breaking out everywhere. Which of course they did, and the film explains how this could happen. But that one storeroom fire on 81 didn't ignite the rest of the building -- the problem was all the other fires that broke out subsequently.
Frankly I'm amazed that any security officer would be so stupid as to start to open a door which has smoke pouring out from underneath. Normally these guys are trained in rudimentary fire procedures, and even an amateur should know you don't open a door to a room where a fire is burning: the inrush of air would cause the fire to explode and there'd be a flashover (as happens in the film), and believe me, that's one of the most dangerous events to be caught in. (Even training for it, in controlled conditions, is scary.)
It does seem to take a long time for them to get that storeroom fire under control (I'm not even sure they ever did: we never do see what happens to that specific fire), but fire is an insidious thing. I've had plenty of occasions where we think we have a fire knocked down, only to see it reignite from an undetected, and usually small, source. It takes a lot of time and work to make sure you really get it all. However, one thing they didn't do (as far as we see) is shut off the power to that room; you can't put water on an electrical fire without risking being electrocuted. Yet all we see is them spraying water into the room. If the power was still on, the guys outside could be fried if they got wet, which is very likely to happen.
I don't know if this answers your question, Snooze, but as far as the film goes, yes, that storeroom fire could go undetected for a long time, but the overall inferno resulted from many individual fires erupting throughout the building, though most appeared to be from the same cause, faulty wiring.
The 81st floor was indeed residential, but it was uncertain if anyone had moved in yet. (You see sales staff showing a suite to prospective buyers/tenants.)
So, even if nobody was actually living there yet there was definitely staff on the floor throughout the work day. So, even without detection equipment someone surely would've smelled it. (I mean, even if they couldn't find the exact source they'd call into security who'd send some people to investigate or even call the fire department as a precaution.)
I got the impression that the fire on 81 -once it got out of control- jumped to other floors because of improper stoppage between the floors. Eventually it triggered an explosion that caused other fires to break out on other floors.
Yes, it seemed to me that there was at least security staff on 81. Isn't there a manned security desk right opposite the elevator? We know there are residents already living in the building, but never learn if any are resident on 81. (The sales agent showing the older couple around at the beginning doesn't say whether anyone's actually living on that floor, but since the models are there it may well be that no one is living there yet.) Of course, the hallway camera eventually picks up the smoke issuing from under the door, but frankly that too seems to have taken a long time to occur.
A more realistic scenario would have been for the fire to be smoldering but not actually bursting into all-out flames. This would allow for smoke to eventually be seen but the fire itself would only have erupted as badly as it did when the dopey guard opened the door. But that still doesn't fully explain why no one smelled anything.
Obviously for the plot to move forward the fire has to go undetected for several hours, but it does seem a stretch in those conditions, though I suppose it could happen.
I didn't get the impression that the fire jumped from 81 to other floors. Separate fires began exploding all around the building, on floors dozens of stories higher or lower than 81, with nothing in between (like the fire on 65). Even when The Glass Tower is becoming fully engulfed the fire is seen only on sporadic floors, not one huge wall of flames. A single fire can jump from one floor to another unconnected one, leaving the ones between untouched, or engulf a few floors all in one cluster, but what happens in the movie as I've always understood it is that because of the "fluky wiring" they had fires breaking out everywhere -- meaning igniting individually, in separate locations, and not stemming from the same source. In a building that size it's highly unlikely you could have so many widely separated fires from the same origination, particularly on both higher and lower floors.
Another factor could have been some of the explosions caused secondary fires that got out of control as they simply overwhelmed the fire crews.
Yeah, the plot needed the fire to be undetected THAT long, but it boggles the mind that NOBODY smelled anything. Did the entire sales and security staff on 81 wear 70's era cologne so strong it could overpower the smell of a raging fire? LOL
In The Glass Inferno, one of the source novels -and the more influential of the two, IMO- the fire starts in a utility closet due to the carelessness of a maintenance man carelessly smoking. A few pads used to move furniture start to smolder and slowly gain traction. As the sparks turn to open flame, they're fueled by flammable products -solvents, etc- stored in the closet.
It's more plausible because in the book, the fire starts on a floor only occupied by commercial tenants and it starts late in the afternoon/early in the evening, after most everyone has left for the start of a long weekend. The only tenant remaining is an interior decorator dealing with problems in his shop. He smells something burning, goes into the corridor and sees smoke coming from the utility closet and flames starting to emerge. He immediately calls it in. As it starts more slowly and at a time when the floor is all but deserted seems more credible to me.
I agree with one of the other posters. The fire didn't only break out on 81 even though that was the first floor to catch fire. The 65th floor also caught fire from faulty wiring, 16 floors below 81. This is the floor where Duncan's offices were and where Robert Wagner and Susan Flannery's characters were trapped. Even if the door hadn't been opened on 81, it is evident that 65 was a mass of flames regardless. The 87th floor also caught fire rather quickly. I don't think that was the same fire from 81 as it spread 6 floors very very fast. When you look at the exterior shots of the building burning you can see how the fire is spread out on different floors and not just climbing.
share