From the Ashes
MIX Magazine, Professional Audio and Music Production
Aug 1, 2003
The [Feb 2003] fire at The Station nightclub in Rhode Island was the worst music-related disaster in New England in over 60 years. 100 people died, including one member of Great White, the heavy metal band performing that night, and nearly 200 more were injured.
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You've no doubt seen the astonishing video of the beginnings of the fire, which was shot by a local news station. The video clearly shows sparks from a set of pyrotechnic fountains, or “gerbs,” hitting the sound-deadening material on the walls and instantly transforming them into sheets of flame. The flames shot up the walls in such synchronization — it's easy to see how some patrons thought the fire was part of the show — and then raced down the low ceiling, away from the stage, engulfing the whole room with extremely toxic, dark smoke.
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One of the most serious of those decisions, and obviously a serious one for the owner of any facility — studio, performance space or rehearsal room — was the choice of acoustic foam. Put up in response to complaints by neighbors and insisted on by the local government before they would renew the club's license, the owners used, according to the Providence Journal, “the lowest grade, the cheapest stuff”: 2.5-inch-thick packing foam, with no flame-retardant characteristics. An independent forensic specialist determined that the foam's combustibility was equivalent to 13 gallons of gasoline. Buying safer foam, according to one local reporter, would have cost the club a whopping additional $600. (The foam's manufacturer is also named in the lawsuits.)
And that is, unfortunately, the same situation that many music facilities find themselves in: how to acoustically treat the walls of rooms in which sound is important without turning them into firetraps.
Nick Colleran is one of the industry's most well-informed voices on this subject. A former studio owner — he was one of the founders of Alpha Audio in Richmond, Va. — and one-time president of SPARS, Colleran has been in the acoustic-treatment business for almost 25 years: Alpha Audio, besides being a successful multiroom facility far larger than you'd think its market would support, was also for many years the American audio distributor of Sonex's line of acoustic foam. Today, he runs Acoustics First, which manufactures and distributes a wide variety of acoustical materials to the media-production market and to the building trades in general. After the Rhode Island fire, he fielded a barrage of calls from national and regional news services.
“As soon as I saw that video of the fire, I knew it couldn't be any kind of acoustic foam: It went up way too fast. They went and insisted on buying the cheapest foam they could find: packing foam. Bedding and packing foam are not supposed to be interior finish material.”
But even genuine acoustic foam comes in different fire-resistant grades. There are three grades — A, B and C (sometimes, confusingly enough, called I, II and III) — that specify how far a flame will spread over a material's surface in a set amount of time. “None of the stuff will burst into flame,” says Colleran. “But if a building is already burning, the grading will tell you how much this will contribute to the fire and perhaps make it worse.”
Polyurethane foam is the cheapest and, consequently, the most popular material for acoustic treatments. “The best urethane foam is only Class-C,” says Colleran. “A typical urethane foam will go out when you remove the flame. In a home studio, you can use it, as long as you don't use voluminous quantities and you have a way out. Generally, it's not illegal, but it can cause real problems if the house burns down.”
But flame retardation isn't the whole story. There's often an inverse relationship between flammability and the amount of smoke a material gives off. Colleran explains, “When you treat something for flame spread, it often increases the smoke output. The smoke is toxic; it's cyanide. You'll be dead before the flames reach you.” There are similar trade-offs when it comes to making materials water-resistant: “Some waterproofings are incredibly flammable,” he says.
Another factor is the type of building you work in. “Materials that will pass code on the floor may not pass on the wall. In a fire, they will get more oxygen on the wall, and even more if they're in a corner,” says Colleran. “If the studio is in a home or a single-story, single-use building, that's one thing, but if you're in a high-rise in the city, you have to worry about vertical updraft. Remember the old carpet on the walls at [Miami's] Criteria Studios? That would never pass code today.”
It's also important to recognize that sound-deadening and soundproofing are not the same, a distinction that may have been lost on The Stations' owners, who installed the foam largely in response to neighbors' complaints. (Ironically, the person who sold the foam to the club was one of those neighbors.) “We have people who want to put urethane foam into churches, day-care centers and nursing homes, and we won't sell it to them,” says Colleran. “Not only is it unsafe, but they think it's going to block sound, which is not what it does.
“Unfortunately, the materials that have the best fire ratings are often more costly to make. This is due to both raw material cost and the difficulty of molding a plastic that has a high melting temperature.”
Original article at
http://mixonline.com/design/applications/audio_ashes/
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) so I might try and stick my two hard drives in there and suspend it with foam. (Stock Sonata drive trays have rubber grommets so no heatsinkability there.) That would be a lot safer... providing I have the room for it, of course - but I might be able to do a kind of Bluefront birdcage with cardboard separators.
Well Duh 
yah dont try this at home unless you know the risks! LOL. many ways to safegaurd like place it top side down on the foil. use drive cage idea stated a few posts up etc etc