NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 21


FEATURE
SPRINKLERS AND THE HOME FIRE PROBLEM

NFPA's vice president of Outreach and
Advocacy and president of the HFSC.
"Sprinklers have become commonplace in virtually every other type of
building, except where the majority
of fires are happening. Our work to
see home fire sprinklers become as
prevalent as sprinklers in other types
of buildings will nearly eliminate fire
deaths."
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE...
In 1973, the National Commission on
Fire Prevention and Control released
"America Burning," a broad and
bluntly critical look at the country's
fire problem. A key recommendation of the landmark report supports
"improved automatic extinguishing systems that would find ready
acceptance by Americans in all kinds
of dwelling units." The emphasis on
sprinklers supported a central tenet of
NFPA: fire sprinklers had led to NFPA's
formation in 1896, when a group of
insurers, witnessing the value of this
technology, standardized sprinkler
installation in commercial settings and
created provisions that would become
NFPA 13, Installation of Sprinkler Systems.
Heeding the recommendation in
"America Burning," NFPA created
a committee in 1973 to develop a
standard for sprinklering one- and
two-family dwellings. Home fire data
then were largely similar to current trends: about 80 percent of all
fire deaths from 1977 to 1981 were the result of fires that occurred
in homes. Though more people died in home fires then-more than
7,000 people annually-a person's risk of dying from these incidents
has remained about the same. Understanding that fire sprinklers
can significantly cut this risk, fire safety experts began extolling the
benefits of sprinklers in homes.
In 1975, NFPA issued NFPA 13D, Installation of Sprinkler Systems in Oneand Two-Family Dwellings and Manufactured Homes. The 1980 edition was
the first to require the use of listed home fire sprinklers during installation. A year later, according to Popular Science, Grinnell developed the
first listed sprinkler for home use. (For more on this development, see
"Looking Back," page 80). In a prescient assessment, a 1980 issue of
NFPA's membership magazine, then known as Fire Journal, stated that
"residential sprinkler technology...will dramatically improve in the
near future, and interest in it will greatly increase. The fire service could

73%

Percentage of
all structure
fires in the
U.S. in 2015
that occurred
in homes,
including oneand two-family
homes

86
seconds

Time between
home fires
in the U.S. in
2015

7

$

billion

Amount of
property
damage
attributed to
home fires
in 2015

act as an educator of this
concept to the public."
After leaving Costa Mesa to
become fire chief of the San
Clemente, California, Fire
Department, Ron Coleman
embraced the educator role
when he began his mission
to sprinkler every new home
in town. "Our city manager
told me [in the mid-1970s],
'we're going to quadruple the
size of the city in 10 years. I'd
like you to do whatever you
can to limit the fire problem.'" Coleman advocated
for a home fire sprinkler
ordinance; over the course of
five years, he organized close
to 50 live demonstrations for
his city council using sprinklered and unsprinklered
structures.
Pushback was swift, and
included resistance from
Coleman's colleagues in
the fire service. "Several fire
chiefs told me my fire service
career was over due to my
advocacy for fire sprinklers,"
he says, adding that some fire
service members still believe
fire sprinkler ordinances
will make their jobs obsolete. "Most of the arguments
also being articulated by
the National Association of
Home Builders at the time
haven't changed significantly
since 30 years ago. They still
say [fire sprinkler ordinances]
will kill housing."
Coleman's relentless mythbusting and tailored demonstrations paid off; San Clemente's ordinance to sprinkler
its new homes, the country's
first, was passed in 1979.
More than 150 California
communities passed similar
local ordinances over the next

OCTOBER 2016 NFPA JOURNAL

21



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
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 44
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 45
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 46
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 47
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 48
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 49
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 50
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 51
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 52
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 53
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 54
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 55
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 56
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 57
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 58
NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 59
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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