Buildng construction for fire services (Brannigan & Corbett) Final Research Paper

Buildng construction for fire services (Brannigan & Corbett) Final - Research Paper Example The changes to these codes is expected to make tall buildings safer around the world and better equipped to handle a disaster. Building codes have been in use in the US for over 100 years since the first model code was written by the National Board of Underwriters in 1905. These codes have been revised and updated based on new materials and construction methods as they became available. Building damage during natural events like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes led to revisions and upgrades of the building codes. The codes are written to establish the minimum requirements but the construction industry has often treated these as the maximum requirements (Dehring, 2006, p10, 11). Two comparatively recent major building disasters have led to the coining of the term â€Å"progressive collapse† and have led to the modification of building codes to prevent these from happening. In 1968, a gas explosion in a kitchen on the 18th floor of the 22-story Ronan Towers Apartment Building in London, UK knocked out pre-cast concrete load bearing panels in a corner of the building and that loss of support caused an entire corner bay of the building to collapse. The Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City was destroyed in 1995 by a bomb in a truck in the basement of the building. The bomb explosion damaged or destroyed three columns which led to the failure of a transfer girder. This caused the columns supported by the transfer girder and the floor areas supported by those columns to collapse causing a general collapse (Nair, 2004, p 1, 2). In both cases, the structural collapse is considered disproportionate to the trigger and the engineering community and the codes have attempted to change design codes to prevent such disproportionate damage. In general, codes attempt to improve building safety using three approaches – increasing local resistance, creating redundancy or improving interconnection (Nair, 2004, p2, 3). Increasing local