Stage and lighting rental
in Fort Lauderdale.

Most of Florida reads the Florida Fire Prevention Code as the state publishes it. Broward County publishes its own local amendments to it, and §F-101.2 sets their reach: they "shall apply countywide in both incorporated and unincorporated areas of Broward County, Florida." Every Fort Lauderdale site sits inside that sentence, along with every site in Hollywood, Pompano Beach, Sunrise, Weston, Davie and the rest of the county.

The document defines the bodies that run it. The authority having jurisdiction is whoever enforces the amendments locally. BORA is the Broward County Board of Rules and Appeals, and BCFCC is the Broward County Fire Code Committee. For a production, the practical reading is simpler than the structure: a Fort Lauderdale special event permit is issued against a county fire code, and the part of that code which governs temporary structures is §F-109.

§F-109 opens by defining a place of assembly as any circus, sideshow, carnival, tent show, theater, skating rink, dance hall, or any other exhibition, production, engagement or offering where 50 or more people may gather for any purpose. A festival stage with an audience in front of it is inside that definition from the first fifty wristbands.

§F-109.1.1(a) sets two separate figures. Temporary structures such as tents with sides exceeding 100 square feet, and canopies without sides exceeding 225 square feet, containing occupancy or operations that could present a life safety hazard — that judgement belonging to the fire code official — require a permit issued under the permitting section of Chapter 1, and have to conform to the life safety provisions of the code and to the Florida Building Code.

The open-sided figure is the one that matters on a show site, because almost nothing a production puts up has walls. A front-of-house position under a 20 × 20 open canopy is 400 square feet and sits well past the line. Two 10 × 10 pop-ups over a merchandise table come to 200 and do not. A 20 × 10 wing cover beside the deck is 200 and does not either, until a second one goes up beside it.

So the canopy count is a permit decision, not a kit decision. It is worth settling at the site-plan stage, while the covers are still lines on a drawing and the number of them can still change.

§F-109.1.3 then says what a permitted temporary structure has to satisfy: structural strength, fire safety, means of egress, accessibility, light, ventilation and sanitary requirements. §F-109.8 holds awnings, tents, canopies and similar products to a flame spread rating of 25 or less, whether they are attached to a building or standing free.

§F-109.2 covers vehicles and engines around a temporary structure. Automotive equipment not necessary to the operation of the performance is not parked within 20 feet of the tent or membrane structure. Then the wider clause: no other automotive equipment or internal combustion engine may be located within 50 feet of the tent, except on a public street.

A tow-behind generator is an internal combustion engine. On a site with a tented stage or a tented hospitality cover, the set stands fifty feet off it unless the street is doing the work. That distance is a cable length, a cable-ramp count and a path that has to cross whatever is between the two points.

Two more clauses ride with the generator. §F-109.4.2 requires at least one 40-BC type fire extinguisher for each power generator or transformer, and at every location where flammable or combustible liquids are used, stored or dispensed. §F-109.5 keeps flammable or combustible liquid out of a tent entirely and no closer than 50 feet to one, which puts the fuel caddy on the same side of the site as the set rather than behind the stage.

Separately, §F-109.4.1 asks for a minimum of one 4A-10BC extinguisher in every tent or air-supported structure under 2,000 square feet, and one more for each additional 2,000 square feet or fraction of it. A 40 × 60 hospitality tent is 2,400 square feet and takes two.

§F-109.9.1 is the clause that decides where a stage can physically land on a park or a lot. Fire access roads are surfaced with solid pavement, grass turf reinforced by concrete grids, or similar surfaces approved by the authority having jurisdiction, designed to accommodate fire apparatus weighing a minimum of 32 tons.

Read that against a turf site. The published requirement is not a mat that keeps a lawn tidy; it is a surface rated to carry sixty-four thousand pounds of truck. Reinforced turf is named in the clause and so is pavement, and anything else goes to the authority having jurisdiction by name. A route onto grass is a submission, not an assumption.

§F-109.9.2 adds that buildings with ramps or elevated roadways carry posted weight limit signs showing maximum load capacity — worth reading before a truck is routed over a deck or through a garage to reach a load-in. §F-109.9.3 requires automatic entry gates in commercial and multifamily communities to have a universal access system approved by the Fire Prevention subcommittee of the Fire Chiefs Association of Broward County, which is the clause behind a gate that opens for the fire department and not for the production.

§F-109.7.1 requires all loose seats, folding chairs and similar seating that is not fixed to the floor to be bonded together in groups of not less than six. Two exceptions are written into it: bonding may be deleted where not more than 500 such seats are provided, and it is not required where tables are provided, as when the occupancy is used for dining.

That 500-seat line is the one to hold on to. A seated concert in a park crosses it quickly, and ganging chairs is time and hardware somebody has to carry onto the site. A gala with rounds does not cross it at all, because the tables answer the clause.

§F-109.7.2 sends the rest elsewhere: securing of chairs, folding and telescoping seating, reviewing stands, grandstands and bleachers is done in accordance with NFPA 102. Bleachers and a reviewing stand therefore arrive with a different standard attached than the chairs on the flat in front of them.