What happens when a fire starts in a carport? If the shelter is designed properly, it should stay inside the carport. In a town in British Columbia, Canada, a carport did have a fire start inside and, luckily, the fire stayed within the structure. According to the linked article, the residents of the home with the carport were alerted to the fire from a smoke detector and no one inside the house was hurt. The only damages to the home appeared to be from smoke. While whatever was inside the carport was damaged, the shelter kept the fire from spreading.
Why didn’t the fire spread? As we’ve seen before with outdoor portable structures like carports and portable garages, the structure is fire retardant. Many of these structures – although not all – need to meet California fire standards to be labeled as fire retardant, which includes NFPA 701, CPAI 84-7, and California Title 19 certification. Once a shelter passes all of these, it can be labeled as “fire retardant.’ Especially when such structures are used at fairs or any place in the sun, the shelter needs to not burn from fire. While this generally means from the outside, a fire can also occur inside the shelter, and this appears to be the case for this carport in British Columbia.
While passing such certification is nearly always associated with polyethylene portable garages and carports, metal carports can be fire retardant, as well. Galvanized steel is somewhat fire resistant, and this material makes up all carport frames and, for metal carports, the roof. While steel may change shape from fire after a couple of hours, this fire didn’t last that long and, regardless of whether the structure was made fully from steel or steel and polyethylene, the properties of the carport allowed it to be contained.