Colored steel plates have the characteristics of lightweight, high strength, and convenient installation. Currently, they are widely used for the placement of prefabricated houses, factories, warehouses, shops, sales booths, and temporary construction sites in earthquake and other disaster stricken areas. Especially for some high-rise buildings and large-span buildings, the advantages of using this type of light steel structure for building are more obvious. However, in recent years, fires caused by color steel panel houses and fires caused by iron fences and billboards that affect personnel evacuation and firefighting have occurred from time to time, causing significant casualties and property damage. Therefore, effective measures should be taken to prevent and control fires in color steel plate buildings.

1、 Characteristics of Color Steel Plate Building Fires

（1） The fire is developing rapidly and spreading rapidly. Due to the large span of steel structure buildings and the abundance of combustible materials, in the event of a fire, the fire develops rapidly and burns fiercely, easily leading to large-scale fires.

（2） The combustion generates a large amount of thick black smoke and toxic gas, which affects the sight of firefighters in the fire scene, makes it difficult to observe the fire point, and makes it difficult to conduct personnel search and rescue, making it difficult for internal personnel to evacuate and easily causing casualties.

（3） The building structure has a low fire resistance rating and is prone to collapse at the top, local areas, walls, and floors, hindering fire fighting attacks and causing casualties.

（4） The fire is hidden, difficult to extinguish, and the cleaning time for residual fires is long.

（5） Incomplete construction of firefighting facilities and lack of water sources. Colored steel plate buildings are mostly located in the urban-rural fringe and temporary buildings, and the construction of fire-fighting facilities cannot keep up, resulting in difficulties in water supply at the fire site.

2、 The main factors causing fires in color steel panel houses

（1） Insufficient understanding of the fire hazards and fire hazards of color steel plates. The color steel sandwich panel uses color coated steel plates as the surface material, and the core materials mainly include polystyrene, polyurethane, and rock wool. The first two types of materials are polystyrene (referred to as benzene plate) or polyurethane with different thicknesses sandwiched between two thin steel plates. Once subjected to high-temperature sparks or open flames, this material immediately burns. Due to the honeycomb structure of the material itself, the contact surface with air increases, and the combustion is very fierce. During the firefighting process, water and fire extinguishing agent can only be sprayed onto the steel plate outside the color steel plate, and cannot directly act on the combustibles inside the interlayer, Moreover, the toxicity of combustion products is particularly high, which can easily cause casualties. This type of material is highly favored by investors or developers due to its relatively low cost. The latter type is to sandwich rock wool with different thicknesses between two thin steel plates. This material is a non combustible material and has good fire and thermal insulation effects. However, due to its relatively high cost, most investors or developers are unwilling to use it.

（2） Some color steel plate construction projects have not undergone fire audit and acceptance, resulting in inherent hidden dangers in color steel plate construction. Some projects in construction do not consider fire protection design in their design, or although they have fire protection design, they are not constructed according to the drawings during the construction process. After the completion of the project, they have not undergone fire protection acceptance, resulting in several aspects that can be checked being ignored.

（3） The owner changes the usage function without authorization, increasing the risk of fire. Some color steel structure factories have a fire risk of Class D and E when applying for fire safety review and acceptance, but in reality, they may be Class C factories, or they were initially produced as Class D and E factories, but later they were not declared in a timely manner due to production project adjustments. For example, a special vehicle modification factory in Jinan changed its color steel plate warehouse into a factory building without authorization, and carried out welding and painting operations inside the factory building without any special fire separation measures. As a result, in April 2006, a fire was caused due to careless welding, resulting in the collapse of the factory building and huge property losses.

（4） Improper installation and use of electrical appliances are also important causes of fire in color steel panel houses. The causes of fire in color steel plate buildings are often directly related to the illegal use of electrical appliances, circuit aging, etc. Some wires are directly installed in the sandwich layer of the color steel plate, while others are directly drilled through the color steel plate when the wires pass through the wall. Without a sheath during drilling, it is easy to cause damage to the insulation layer of the wires and cause short circuits and fires. After being put into use, poor management resulted in the use of open flames or welding and cutting operations near the color steel plate, which caused the combustion of combustible sandwich materials inside the color steel plate and led to the occurrence of a fire.

3、 Measures to prevent fire in color steel panel houses
（1） Strengthen law enforcement supervision and strictly control building audits. The key to avoiding and reducing color steel plate building fires is to control the source. During the fire audit and acceptance process of construction projects, new and temporary buildings should strictly follow the requirements of the specifications, and the use of non flame retardant color steel plates in the project is strictly prohibited. In the fire supervision and inspection, color steel plates that have already been used that do not meet the requirements should be replaced or undergo fire prevention treatment within a specified period of time. It is more important to carefully inspect the fire sealing and casing of electrical circuits, pipeline crossings, holes, etc.

（2） Reasonably configure electrical circuits. One is to arrange the distribution board reasonably. The distribution board should be installed on non combustible materials and cannot be replaced with coarse fuses or simply replaced with copper or iron wires. The second is to choose suitable wires. We must resolutely use wires with good insulation layer and wear metal or porcelain tubes for protection. It is strictly prohibited to connect electrical circuits without permission. The third is to use electrical appliances correctly. After using household appliances such as televisions, refrigerators, freezers, and air conditioners, not only should they be turned off, but the power plug should also be unplugged. It is strictly prohibited to use high-power appliances.

（3） Adopting an active monitoring and detection alarm system. When a fire occurs, the colored steel plate core material first decomposes to release combustible gas, and the degree of gas penetration in the gaps between the plates varies with different sealing degrees. Strictly manage the alarm system for accurately detecting fire, and further improve and strengthen the fire detection system. Add sensitivity sensors for heating, emitting light, emitting sound, smoke, combustible materials, and special odors, and connect them with the fire center machine. If technical conditions permit, monitoring systems should be added in key areas.

（4） Equip effective firefighting equipment and facilities. From a large number of experiments and cases, it can be seen that for the suppression of color steel plate fires, it is difficult to control the fire directly, whether it is a sprinkler system or a fire extinguisher. The sprinkler system can also increase the self weight load of light steel buildings, and even become unfavorable factors such as rapid structural collapse in disasters. But if the color steel plate fire cannot be extinguished in the early stage, it will cause serious consequences. The most effective extinguishing method in the initial stage is to cut the metal surface of the sheet metal, cut off the path of fire spread, or expose all combustion to visible space, and then use fire extinguishers, hydrants, etc. to extinguish the fire. It is necessary and effective to equip electric cutting machines, toothless saws, axes, crowbars, and other tools appropriately in buildings that use a large amount of color steel plate materials for initial fire extinguishing.