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"What is Fire proofing"
Fireproofing is a technology which
allows the improvement of the reaction to fire of materials considered
dangerous in case of fire :
by retarding the initial start of the fire,
by limiting their post-combustion,
by retarding the decrease in their physical and mechanical properties.
The technology which consists
of applying fireproofing products to the materials, by various
procedures, allows the reduction of the risk of fire and to
obtain materials which conform to the Fire Safety Legislation.
In France, the legislation
makes fireproofing obligatory for decoration inside establishments
which receive the public. The classification demanded for
the materials used is "4-2-1"
M 4 for floorings - M 2 for vertical surfaces - M 1 for
In the beginning, man, having
discovered fire, made it a god, fleeing from it as soon as
it threatened their existence. They understood however that
an abundant rain storm extinguished the fire and that humid
areas escaped the fire. Early man dared to fight the fire
found traces of the first attempts at fireproofing with the
Egyptians who used various minerals to make certain
cloths such as cotton or linen resistant to fire.
During the siege of Piraeus
(23 B.C.) solutions of alum were used to make the wooded ramparts
The Hebrews and the Greeks
probably organised the first fire patrols, charged with giving
the alarm and to fight the fire.
Under the reign of Nero,
the burning of Rome in 64 A.D. caused the application of important
means of fire prevention to avoid a repeat of a similar catastrophe.
Gaule (France) benefited
from the experience of the Roman conquerors, but at the beginning
of the middle ages, fire fighting was a precarious occupation,
and for many centuries little progress was made in fire fighting
Real development in fire fighting
came in the 17th and 18th centuries with the work of
the Englishman Wyld and the treatment of cotton with a solution
of alum, of iron sulphate and borax (1735).
A century later (1824)
a Frenchman Gay-Lussac took out a patent on the use
of a mixture of ammonium phosphate, ammonium chlorate and
borax, for the fireproofing of cotton.
The development of fireproofing
has reached a high point during the years after the Second
Modern life brings with it a constant
increase in the dangers of fire. The daily use of new materials
extremely inflammable, the concentration into a small space of more
and more people and property causes an aggravation of the seriousness
of a fire, both in numbers and in gravity, particularly in the industrial
It is thought that losses due to
industrial fires have quadrupled between 1990 and 2000, despite
the progress made in the prevention and protection against fire.
In France alone, there were more
than 400 000 accidents in 2003. For the year 1997, the damages amounted
to several billion Euros, in both direct losses and production losses.
The figures above are only those
covered by reimbursement by the Fire Insurance Companies. If indirect
losses are added ( bankruptcy, reduced profits ) the figures are
very much higher.
Fire has other serious consequences
- unemployment following the destruction of an industrial site,
the desolation of an entire region after a forest fire. Many works
of art and irreplaceable souvenirs are destroyed every year.