On the recordJanuary 9, 2020
I introduced this amendment in partnership with my friend from California (Mr. DeSaulnier), with whom I serve on the Rules Committee and with whom I serve on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I have a poster here, Mr. Chairman, of what it looks like when the foam is released to prevent a fuel fire in an airport hangar. If you can't tell from where you are sitting, this is the tail of the airplane being lifted up above the foam. As currently drafted, I certainly agree with the ranking member that this bill is much too expansive. But in this one limited case, it doesn't go far enough. Our building code enforcement agencies locally, our local fire codes, require that in order to have a hangar permitted, it must have these fire suppression systems. But what we found in our research, Mr. Chairman, is that more often than not, these systems go off unintentionally. In fact, in the last 16 years, there have been 174 hangar foam releases like this one. Only 37 of those were in response to an actual incident. The other 137 were accidental releases. If we are concerned about these toxic chemicals, certainly having them available for a dire firefighting need but released accidentally, it advantages no one. In fact, even in the 37 incidents that were in response to a fire event, none of those were in response to the fuel fire event that the building code requires these systems be installed to suppress. What my amendment does, Mr.…
