Furniture fires a federal priority

Inez Tenenbaum, South Carolina's former Superintendent of Education, says making sofas and other upholstered furniture less prone to deadly fires is a "must-do" for the federal Consumer Products Safety Commission that she now heads.

"Preventing loss of life from upholstered furniture fires is one of my top priorities," Tenenbaum said in a statement late Thursday to The Post and Courier. She hopes to have a new fire safety rule "as soon as possible."

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Scott Wolfson, director of public affairs for the agency, said Tenenbaum "was deeply impacted" by the deaths of nine Charleston firefighters trapped in the June 2007 Sofa Super Store fire. As a result, she made reducing the flammability of upholstered furniture "one of her top fire safety goals" when she became agency chairwoman in June, he said.

Sofas and other lounge furniture pose a deadly hazard because the stuffing that makes most of them comfy is polyurethane foam.

Firefighters call the foam "solid gasoline." If ignited, the hidden killer burns so fast and hot that people often can't escape.

Fires fueled by sofas and other upholstered furniture, which sit in nearly every American home, kill an average of 600 people a year, some 30,000 since the safety commission was created nearly four decades ago.

Charleston firefighters encountered this same hazard when they rushed inside the burning Sofa Super Store on Savannah Highway in West Ashley. The moment that fire reached the sofas, the fate of nine firefighters was sealed. The sofas roared into flame. The fire exceeded temperatures of 1,400 degrees and filled the air with lethal gases, including cyanide.

As a result of that fire, the state Legislature is considering setting up a committee to recommend ways to regulate the sale of highly flammable furniture. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Chip Limehouse, a Charleston Republican, passed the House on Wednesday and is pending in the Senate.

"It's good, common-sense legislation. It's designed to save people's lives, and it's going to do that," Limehouse said.

The federal government has tried off and on since the 1970s to mandate fire safety in upholstered furniture but has faced stiff resistance from the furniture industry. The mattress industry, which uses essentially the same construction material, voluntarily cooperated with safety regulation that entire time, dramatically reducing fire deaths and injuries from mattress fires.

The safety commission's latest effort to set a national flammability standard for upholstered furniture has been debated for two years.

The furniture industry says its voluntary measures, plus a drop in smoking and increased use of smoke detectors, have contributed to a 40 percent decline in the number of furniture fire deaths since the 1980s.

Wolfson said that while the safety agency presses for a final rule, "We will continue to work toward preventing residential fire deaths this year by educating families about the importance of having working smoke alarms on every floor, an effective fire escape plan, and layers of fire safety protection in the house."

In addition, he said, the agency is evaluating the effectiveness of new cigarettes designed to go out before they can spark a fire. Most states, including South Carolina, have passed laws requiring cigarettes to meet such a standard.

Nevertheless, Wolfson says, hundreds of deaths could be prevented each year by a new federal rule improving the fire safety of sofas and stuffed furniture. "Upholstered furniture is involved in more fire-related fatalities than any other product under our jurisdiction."

Yvonne Wenger contributed to this report. Reach Doug Pardue at dpardue@postandcourier.com or 937-5558.