Pechanga Tribal Nation

Fire safety important at Pechanga

Fire safety state-of-the-art at Pechanga casino

June 29, 2002
JOHN HALL - Staff Writer - NCTimes.com

PECHANGA INDIAN RESERVATION ---- With its 14 floors and nearly 1 million square feet of space, the newly opened $262 million Pechanga Resort & Casino is easily the largest building in Southwest County.

It is also arguably one of the safest if a disaster or fire were to strike the facility.

The building, with its thousands of sprinklers, is designed to fight fires itself from within, said Capt. Chris Burch of the Pechanga Fire Department. Which is good, because firefighting equipment used in the area would not be effective enough at battling a blaze within the towering building from the outside.

Ladder trucks, with their extending ladders, give firefighters the ability to get a hose high enough to spread water on the flames and are frequently used to fight fires that break out in multilevel buildings. But the typical ladder truck, such as the one housed at Station No. 73 in Temecula, reaches only about six floors, said Temecula fire Battalion Chief Howard Windsor.

"The truck company would be involved in things like rescues and helping evacuate occupants," Windsor said. Firefighters would also be used at the ground level and within the building to help fight the fire, he added.

Through an agreement with the Pechanga Fire Department, Temecula's fire equipment and personnel are dispatched automatically to the resort and casino if a fire is reported. Pechanga's fire engines and crews are also sent to Temecula to assist with fires as part of the mutual agreement.

State-of-the-art protection

Throughout the brand-new hotel, casino, showrooms and restaurants are thousands of fire-suppressing sprinklers, smoke detectors and heat detectors. Each of the 522 hotel rooms has three sprinklers and a smoke detector.

The massive sprinkler system was installed by the same company that has done that job at a number of Las Vegas hotel and casinos, officials said.

"Patrons should know that they are surrounded by state-of-the-art fire protection," Burch said.

All the fire protection devices ---- from alarms to the sprinklers and smoke detectors ---- are constantly monitored electronically in a fire command room within the hotel. If something goes wrong, an off-site alarm company alerts dispatchers at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and emergency personnel are sent to the scene.

The facility is set up in "zones," and if a sprinkler or smoke detector is activated in any of them, there are safety procedures in place designed to automatically contain the problem to that zone, Burch said. Protective fire walls come down and act as a partition at the same time air pressure and flow changes to keep any smoke or flames from spreading to adjacent zones, he added.

There are 18 large stairwells, including three main stairwells in the huge tower. Each stairwell can fit three or four people shoulder to shoulder and, in conjunction with the others, are designed to accommodate all the people from all the floors in case of an emergency evacuation, officials said.

The building is classified as "type one," meaning the highest-quality steel, concrete and masonry were used in areas of structural integrity, Burch said. The only wood used in the design of the facility was as facades, he added.

Pechanga fire and tribal officials said all codes mandated during the facility's construction ---- such as the Uniform Building Code, Uniform Fire Code and California Plumbing Code ---- were followed to the letter or exceeded.

"They went over and above California design standards for this facility," said Norm Davidson, one of two fire marshals to oversee the construction and opening of the resort and casino.

Size comparisons

When the expansion of The Promenade mall is completed later this year, square footage there ---- at more than 1 million ---- will surpass the more than 989,000 square feet of the casino and resort.

Other large facilities in Temecula, according to city officials, include the 410,000-square-foot Scotts Co. building and the International Rectifier building that totals about 300,000 square feet.

Before the construction of the 14-story Pechanga Resort & Casino, with its 13 above-ground floors and one-level basement, the tallest building in the Temecula area was the four-story, 653,400-square-foot Guidant facility on Ynez Road, officials said.

The opening of the Pechanga Resort & Casino also greatly increased the number of elevators in use locally.

Temecula officials estimate there are two or three dozen elevators in use in the various buildings in the city, such as industrial facilities, hotels, the mall and medical centers.

The Pechanga Resort & Casino has 17 ---- nine passenger elevators and eight service elevators. Each of those elevators is monitored in the facility's fire command room. Digital readouts show which floor each car is on and its current direction of travel.

All the elevators, as well as heat and air-conditioning throughout the facility, can be controlled by firefighters in the fire command room if necessary, Burch said.

Pechanga's fire department

The opening of the new resort and casino is a huge step for the relatively new Pechanga Fire Department.

The department has had only full-time firefighters for the last three years, Burch said. The tribe has nine permanent firefighters, seven reserve firefighters and a chief, he said. The department has two fire engines, with one primarily used to battle wildland blazes.

Those numbers will be increasing soon as the department expands to keep up with its responsibilities.

The Pechanga tribe has approved the addition of a new ladder truck, which means about a dozen new firefighters will be needed to staff it.

The truck, a 100-foot Tiller-Quint ladder truck, has been under construction since April and is expected to be delivered the first part of next year, Burch said. It will have a 300-gallon tank and a pump capable of moving 1,750 gallons of water per minute, he added.

Pechanga firefighters will be the first line of defense against any major emergency at the resort and casino, Burch said.

"It's a huge responsibility knowing we will have a major effect on this tribe," he said.

However, some of that burden is lifted, he added, because firefighters know the facility itself has such state-of-the-art fire suppression and firefighting capabilities.

"Let me put it this way," he said. "This is a place I would feel very safe taking my family."

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