Faster Fires: Why your home could burn 8x faster

CHICAGO (WLS) --

These large open boxes were set up for the I-Team by the Alsip Fire Department. The one on the right is full of older or antique furniture, made of cotton, wool and down.

The room on the left is a typical a home with newer, synthetic furniture made with chemicals like polyurethane and hydro-carbons.

Firefighters and other safety experts lit both rooms at the same time using a candle. In just one minute and thirty seconds, flames raged through the newer furnishings in what firefighters call a "flashover."

The old furniture burned slowly. It takes more than 13 minutes to "flashover."

"The products now-a-days are all synthetic," says Thomas Styczynski, Fire Chief Village of Alsip. "They are hydrocarbons, a solid form of gasoline if you will. They will ignite quicker, they give off different gasses. Besides carbon monoxide, they give off cyanide gases, all those which are toxic to humans."

And it's not just furniture causing faster fires. Research at Underwriter Laboratories in Northbrook has shown that the modern construction materials can put you at a higher risk.

"Lightweight construction uses laminated beams and trusses and under normal circumstances these are great," says contractor and TV show host Ron Hazelton. "But in fire they collapse much sooner than conventional wood."

Hazelton showed the I-Team two examples. The bigger piece of wood is solid and used in older construction. The other is many pieces of wood compressed together, with glue, found in newer homes.

"What happens with solid wood is it begins to burn from the outside in, so the outside may char but the interior of it the structural integrity is there so it tends to fail slowly and you know when it is going to go," Hazleton says. "This burns hotter and more quickly, and when it fails, it fails almost instantaneously."

Visit link:
Faster Fires: Why your home could burn 8x faster