Effects of Fire Regulation Revisions on Building Fire Damage

Between 1965 and 1974, there were many large building fires in Japan which resulted in numerous fatalities. In response, several revisions were made to the fire regulations for large buildings in the Building Standard Law and the Fire Service Law, leading to a decrease in such fires until about 1980. Extensive fire damage was frequently seen in old buildings with insufficient fire prevention features, so application of the fire regulation revisions to existing buildings was a crucial problem.This paper compares the content and timing of fire regulation revisions, retroactive application to existing buildings, and time limits for retroactive application of each fire regulation with the average fire burned area of buildings in which fires originated according to usage and construction.I examine the main causes of the sudden decrease in fire damage to large buildings from about 1970 to 1980, and show that the decrease is due to a sharp reduction in the number of large fires, owing to the retroactive installation of automatic fire alarm systems.