Foam-filled furniture

Duration: 3:49

Peter Wilding, Fire and Emergency New Zealand and Hon Kris Faafoi, Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs

Hon Kris Faafoi:
So, Pete’s just, he's just lighting it now.

Peter Wilding:
Yeah. So we've got a compartment that's been furnished like a standard room. We've just ignited in the far corner as if a child's been playing with a sofa playing on a cycle with a cigarette lighter similar to several examples that I'll show you later on.

Hon Kris Faafoi:
Look how much smoke coming out already!

Peter Wilding:
The foam produces an enormous amount of smoke very very quickly but that foam is also highly toxic it contains hydrogen cyanide; hydrogen fluoride; hydrogen chloride gas and so if you stand up in that it's obviously is very toxic and you can be overcome, even if you're not overcome it can affect your reasoning ability, and people do all sorts of unusual things, they might go and hide in a cupboard or do other things rather than make a safe escape.

You can now see that flame with just a few seconds into it, we've now got actual flame extension across the ceiling that's now heating up other items in that room - they will start to combust. It will be penetrating beyond the room of origin now and start to go out into other, ah, down the hallway into other rooms of the house. The smokes penetrating down there.

The smoke alarm is activated after 30 seconds, so if you're upstairs it's 30 seconds from the time the fire started you've now woken up to being aware something's going on in your house.

Hon Kris Faafoi:
So how much of that ferocity is down to the foam?

Peter Wilding:
It's almost entirely down to the foam at the moment.

We're going to go in and extinguish that within about three and a half minutes and you'll notice once we've done that there'll be a lot of timber in there that's almost unburned, it won't even be charred, almost all of what you were seeing at the moment is - comes down to the foam just combusting.

Hon Kris Faafoi:
It’s a lot of smoke and flames for a minute and a half two minutes in.

Peter Wilding:
Yeah and you can see now we've actually got for extension outside of the compartment, its’s the smoke that is traveling several meters away from a fire is now igniting and so that is now heating up other aspects of the compartment.

Hon Kris Faafoi:
So that doesn't just mean you talk about the heat release and short amount of time this is what you're talking about right.

Peter Wilding:
Exactly, there's virtually nothing else in your house that will release this much heat in such a short period of time. Carpets and furnishings and drapes it sure they will burn eventually but nothing will give you this amount of heat production.

Hon Kris Faafoi:
So it’s coming out now, well and truly now.

Peter Wilding:
That room is totally un-survivable no one even with protective gear and they will survive in that room but also down there in nearby rooms and hallways and other bedrooms now they will now be un-survivable in a house situation. If this was downstairs you might be upstairs in a room where you have not been overcome by the fire but you can now no longer get downstairs and that's what we saw on Flatbush with those three people that died.

Hon Kris Faafoi:
Now your guys are about to go in now, but this is pretty early in the big scheme of things right.

Peter Wilding:
Yep so they're going in at about three and a half minutes now our average attendance in New Zealand cities is around eight minutes, so our fire engine is still four or five minutes away down the road. We're just going to put it out now so that you can see once the fire is out we'll go and have a look in the compartment and you'll see what has been burning and what hasn't, what has really contributed to the this incredible amount of fire development.

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