In this IFSA webinar, Jim Lake, Vice President of Training at Viking Corporation and a 40-year veteran of fire protection (with prior roles at NFPA and NFSA), examines how fire protection for parking structures is being reshaped by changing vehicles, changing buildings, and a series of major international fires. Jim organizes the session around three themes: the evolution of the hazard, current protection guidance, and emerging issues still lacking clear standards.
The hazard has changed dramatically—from the nearly all-steel cars of the 1920s to modern vehicles with substantial plastic content and lithium-ion batteries—producing larger, faster-spreading fires, including running pool fires from ruptured plastic fuel tanks. Notably, the recent landmark parking-structure fires (Liverpool 2017, Stavanger and Münster/Osnabrück 2019, Luton 2023) were not started by EVs; they were conventional vehicle fires whose modern fuel packages drove their severity.
Jim traces the protection guidance across the codes and standards: the IBC still exempts small open parking structures, while NFPA 101, NFPA 5000, and the 2023 edition of NFPA 88A now require sprinklers in all parking structures regardless of openness. He explains the NFPA 13 hazard classifications (ordinary hazard group two for structures without car stackers; extra hazard group two where combustible liquids and shielded fires are present), compares them against FM Global data sheets 7-15 and 3-26, and walks through five design scenarios. The session closes on the frontier problems—automated parking structures, electric vehicles and energy storage systems (where water controls rather than extinguishes lithium-ion fires), alternative-fuel vehicles, and the difficult question of evaluating or retrofitting older systems—plus the forthcoming ISO guidance and NFPA full-scale fire testing.