Cocoanut Grove Fire Analysis

Waleed Alshahrani
OSH-310
Mrs. Susan Miller
03/14/2018

Lessons to learn from
The Cocoanut Grove Fire

As a Civil Engineering Technology major, learning about fire protection and safety, gives me strong eye about how safe buildings should be in case there is a fire outbreak. In order to make a close analysis and give my opinion about buildings and fire protection, I will analyze the book titled "Fire in the Grove: The Cocoanut Grove Tragedy and Its Aftermath," is written by John Esposito. It is noted that, in the United States, about 12000 lives are lost as a result of fire every year a number bigger compared to other disasters such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. In 1942 the Cocoanut Grove fire tragedy in Boston claimed …show more content…
Notably, the Cocoanut Grove had been a well-established club and with its new owner, Barney Welansky things just became better for the club but not for long. The club was expanded to three times its original size. With change of occupancy, remodeling and expansions were done. However, in my opinion, this was wrong. The changes made were not made with the approval and inspection of the fire authorities. Barney Welansky had several politician friends in high places and obtaining a clearance certificate from the fire department did not take him too long to get one. Looking at the building and construction codes; changes of occupancy requires the attention of building and fire authorities. Building codes define the degree of protection for walls, ceilings, and floors in accordance with hazard of the occupancy. The codes usually dictate the degree of …show more content…
Since this was a club most of the content in the building were flammable materials making the fire spread much faster within the club. The records noted that the fire took eight minutes to spread throughout the corners of the Cocoanut Grove night club. In my opinion, this means that the way the building was constructed, made it impossible for fire fighters to control the fire therefore increasing the number of victims and the damage of the

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