Simulation of time to first water application for the first interstate bank fire

On May 4, 1988 a fire occurred after hours on the 12^th floor of the First Interstate Bank building, a 62 story steel- frame office tower in Los Angeles California. The sprinkler system in the building was not operational. The fire spread though the 12^th floor and extended to the 13 , 14 , 15 and part of the 16 floor before it was under control by the fire department. Discrete event simulation is applied here to evaluate the time for firefighters to access to the 12^th floor, the fire origin. GPSS/H is used to analyze lognormal distributions developed to represent the firefighter task data. These results are compared to those using triangular distributions, as well as data collected concerning the fire department response to the World Trade Center on 9/11.