Feb. 3, 2005

In response to Mark Harris' letter, I thought that the Department of Energy regulations were the reason we don't have lightning protection on the top floor of the west parking garage; instead, it turns out to be the NFPA fire code. As I understand it, we are permitted to install lightning protection there, but are not required to do so by the life safety codes. Apparently, Lab management has decided that this protection is unnecessary for the tallest building in the immediate area.

If you gaze down upon the chemical storage warehouse (SM-31) adjacent to the parking garage, it has many lightning rods. I don't have any problem with that - no one wants a fire in a chemical warehouse - but I don't think lighting protection is an either/or proposition. If the garage had its own lightning protection system, it would offer some additional protection for the warehouse because it is so much taller; the warehouse (at least parts of it) would be in the "protection shadow" of the garage, in addition to protecting personnel parked on the top deck of the garage.

Mr. Harris also said that "People...get killed by lightning strikes all the time," and, "If there is a thunderstorm, don't park on the top level of a garage, don't get out of the car and don't walk around outside." That's really good advice. He proposes an administrative solution for a design problem - we'll just tell people not to park on the top deck in the morning if thunderstorms are in the forecast for the afternoon.

We can't use the top deck of the garage in the wintertime because we can't manage the snow removal (black paint might help here), and we can't use it in the summertime because we might be struck by lightning. Am I the only one who doesn't get it? Isn't it a waste to build a parking structure where 25 percent of it is unusable for several months of the year? Will the new parking garage near the Otowi Building have the same defects?

--David W. Thomson