Anti-seismic brackets for fire-fighting systems
The anti-seismic fixing of the systems is a fundamental requirement to guarantee the safety of the occupants and a limited economic impact on the repair of post-earthquake damage - it has been observed that the damage resulting from non-structural components often exceeds the losses due to structural damage. Many events have shown that following earthquakes, the plants not seismically fixed have suffered damage to compromise their functionality and the fires, which sometimes the earthquake itself causes, could not be controlled.
It is in fact essential to ensure the uninterrupted operation of services such as the supply of water and electricity (distributed via pipes and cables), emergency services (alarm systems), passive (compartmentalization) and active (sprinkler) fire protection.
For this reason, in recent years, the standards relating to non-structural systems have been based on increasingly rigid criteria, see also the recent UNI / TR 11792 on anti-seismic fixings for sprinkler systems.
Ultimately, it is important to underline that the anti-seismic fixings must, in addition to guaranteeing functionality in the event of an earthquake, also maintain their resistance and stability even in fire conditions because the New Fire Prevention Code requires that the presence of protected paths that must guaranteeing the exodus of the occupants, with and without disabilities, for the entire evacuation period. For this reason, the supports of water and electricity supply systems (distributed through pipes and cables), emergency services (alarm systems), passive (partitioning) and active (sprinkler) fire protection must have resistance to fire such as not to be damaged by the products of the fire.