NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 14
ยป IN A FLASH
ing. It gave me a very up-close and
personal experience of a home fire.
I knew the people who died in that
fire so it made a lasting impression
on me. When you see people who
are severely burned like that, it's
something you don't forget.
Years later, there was an apartment fire in Staten Island in which
some children were killed. I remember reading about it in the paper. The
father went out to the market but
when he came back the apartment
was ablaze. He could hear his children yelling 'Daddy, please help us.'
That just went to my core. By that
time I had my daughter and couldn't
imagine being in that situation. It
was horrifying to me, the idea of being helpless to save your family. But
I was also living in a center-entrance
Colonial and had heard that the
center stairwell could fill with smoke
and fire and could trap children
who were upstairs, preventing them
from being rescued during a fire. I
was starting to become aware of the
kinds of threats fire posed.
Later, on a visit to California, my
18-month-old daughter fell into
a pool. As she was sinking to the
bottom, she was looking up at me
and in her eyes, I could see her saying, "Help me, Daddy." I remember
imagining, "What if I couldn't do
anything about this?" She was totally
helpless, and was totally dependent
on me. That, coupled with the situation of the dad who couldn't help his
children, gave me the feeling of what
it felt like to not be able to help.
For a parent, it's probably the most
horrifying thing you could think of
when it comes to a child. Had I not
been there to pull my daughter out
of the pool that day, she would have
drowned. It wasn't hard for me to
imagine that situation in something
like a fire. It all came together for
me, and that's when I said, "This is
important."
14
NFPA JOURNAL OCTOBER 2016
Is that when you got involved
with the Home Fire Sprinkler
Coalition?
After HFSC was founded, someone
suggested I become the spokesman
because of my work as a home improvement expert. Working with Peg
Paul, HFSC's communication manager, we did a retrofit of my home in
Connecticut about 12 years ago. We
brought a video crew in during the
installation to show how the retrofit
was done.
I was very interested in how they
installed the fire sprinklers. They
would run a pipe inside a closet or a
laundry chute. It took a lot of planning so they didn't have to tear the
house apart. Another thing you had
to consider was the water pattern
from the sprinklers and how that
water pattern needed to overlap.
There was a lot of thoughtful design
and engineering that went into the
sprinklers in my home. Once they
were installed, it gave me immense
peace of mind.
Why was it so important to you
to have home fire sprinklers
installed?
The thing about fatal fires is that most
of them happen at night. If you have
smoke alarms, they're going to wake
you up and alert you to the presence
of a fire so you can get out of there
and get your family out of there. It's
surprising how fast a fire can become
deadly-sometimes it's within only
two to four minutes, and if you're
waking up, that's not a lot of time.
Sprinklers can buy you that little bit
of extra time to get out safely.
Wouldn't smoke alarms alone
do the job?
People should have an accurate understanding of what a fire can be like.
We have a lot of Hollywood versions
of fire in our minds-a lot of flame
and no smoke. We don't understand
how quickly fires can spread and how
difficult it is to function in a home that
is on fire. Sometimes, it takes just a
few minutes for smoke to fill a room.
The smoke alarms will go off and wake
you, but the sprinklers can control the
fire and give you time to escape.
What did you do to get the
word out with HFSC?
I started doing fire safety demonstrations. I did a few on "Good Morning
America" where we did side-by-side
burns. We would build two identical
rooms, one with a sprinkler system
and one without, and we would set
them on fire. In two to three minutes,
temperatures in the unsprinklered
room were up to 1,500 degrees. In the
other room, the sprinkler would activate and put the fire out. People could
see how the unsprinklered rooms
quickly became unsurvivable, mostly
because of the smoke.
The first side-by-side burn we did
was in Scottsdale, Arizona, to show
how quickly fire sprinklers could put
out the flame. I was geared up with a
mask, and when the smoke cleared I
took it off but the fumes and vapors
from the burn were so strong that I
couldn't breathe. I remember thinking,
"If it's this bad with the smoke gone,
how bad would it be with the smoke?"
We also created a "burn trailer"
demonstration in Times Square in
New York City and lit the drapes
on fire. When the curtains burned,
flames leaped to the ceiling and the
sprinklers went off. The whole thing
was put out in a matter of seconds by
sprinklers.
One of the last burns we did was in
June at the NFPA conference in Las Vegas. It was a very, very hot fire. It started
fast and burned hot. The heat generated
from it was impressive. We had flashover in that fire in just about a minute.
We had firefighters and fire administrators on bleachers watching. They were
about 50 feet away but when the wind
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue
Contents
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - Cover1
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - Cover2
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 1
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - Contents
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 3
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 4
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 5
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 6
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 7
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 8
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 9
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 10
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 11
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 12
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 13
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 14
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 15
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 16
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 17
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 18
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 19
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 20
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 21
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 22
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 23
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 24
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 25
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 26
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 27
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 28
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 29
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 30
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 31
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 32
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 33
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 34
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 35
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 36
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 37
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 38
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 39
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 40
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 41
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 42
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 43
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NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 45
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 46
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NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 60
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 61
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 62
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 63
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 64
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 65
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 66
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 67
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 68
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 69
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 70
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 71
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 72
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 73
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 74
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 75
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 76
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 77
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 78
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 79
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 80
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - Cover3
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - Cover4
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