Heat and smoke vents are installed in buildings as an active fire protection measure.
[4] This is partly a historical consequence of the installation of heat and smoke vents following the August 1953 General Motors, Livonia, MI major fire in a nonsprinklered manufacturing facility which effectively stopped the production of automatic transmissions for all of GM.
Subsequent to sprinklers being installed in storage buildings as a widespread practice, there has been a lack of consensus regarding the nature of the interaction of sprinklers and automatic heat and smoke vents.
[6] Automatic heat and smoke vents are required by model building codes in large, single-story factory and storage facilities in conjunction with control mode fire sprinklers, but are not permitted to be installed in conjunction with suppression mode, e.g., ESFR, fire sprinklers unless the vents are manually operated or have an operating mechanism with a thermal rating of not less than 360 °F.
due to fear of overwhelming the sprinkler system and destroying the building.