Word: code
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some states (Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut) and some cities (Boston, Atlanta) have in recent years enacted relatively stringent fire codes. But nearly all, including Las Vegas, have grandfather clauses that exempt existing buildings or require only minor improvements. Miami Beach, for example, adopted a tough code in 1976 but only requires its existing hotels to install, among other measures, manual fire alarms and emergency doors. A team of Miami Beach fire officials is going to Las Vegas to see what lessons the MGM Grand Hotel case holds for their city. Admits Assistant Fire Chief Braniard Dorris: "The potential [for a similar...
...five casino hotels in Atlantic City, on the other hand, four were built after the city adopted a tough fire-safety code in 1978. As a result, they have sprinklers and smoke alarms on all floors, elevators that return automatically to the ground floor in case of fire, and outside stairways to allow quick evacuations. Yet no matter how new they are, high-rise hotels-indeed, all high-rise buildings-remain largely out of the life-saving reach of firetruck aerial ladders. Most of them can extend only 90 ft. or so, or as high as the eighth or ninth...
...building can be twice as expensive as installing the same system in a new one, and owners are usually reluctant to do so voluntarily. Las Vegas fire department officials, for example, claim they have urged the MGM Grand Hotel and other hotels built be fore the 1979 building code to install sprinkler systems and smoke alarms, but to no avail. "Retrofitting of the older hotels has always been an economic tug of war," says Clark County Manager Bruce Spaulding. Perhaps now they will. Says Gordon Vickery, director of the U.S. Fire Administration: "We usually lose people in ones and twos...
Zamberletti brings some experience to the job. In 1976 he supervised rescue operations after an earthquake hit the Friuli region, northeast of Venice. His performance earned him a reputation for getting things done-and a certain fame among ham radio operators under the code name Zorro. But he admits that the success of that effort owed much to foreign assistance, especially from...
Rosen's system consists of a black-and-white TV camera that scans objects against a brightly lighted background, then transmits to a computer the hundreds of dots (or pixels) that form the TV image. The computer transforms these dots into binary code and compares what it sees with previously recorded descriptions of various objects. It compares features like perimeter and area, enabling it to recognize and choose among nine different objects. "Ten years from now," says Rosen, "this will be a dodo...