Time May Be Ripe for Home Fire Sprinklers

Fire sprinklers save lives, property and firefighting costs. Those are facts born out by fires in structures without sprinklers and proven in cases where sprinklers have doused and controlled blazes before the flame took hold and started to burn out of control.

The recent fire in the First Interstate Bank building in Los Angeles has focused attention on the need for sprinklers in all tall buildings, not just those built after a 1974 change in the state Building Code made them mandatory. But the Anaheim City Council, at the urging of Fire Chief Jeff Bowman, is wisely looking not only at retrofitting its older tall buildings but at requiring sprinklers in all new homes.

In Anaheim, 11 of the 28 buildings in the city that are taller than 55 feet have no sprinklers. Bowman has proposed that sprinklers be required in all those buildings by 1992. He also wants sprinklers required in all apartment and condominium complexes with more than two units and in new single-family homes.

Requiring fire sprinklers in homes is not a new idea. It has been the law in San Clemente since 1980 and other fire-prevention officials see it as a logical safety requirement. Fires in tall buildings may get a lot of attention, but about four out of every five fire deaths occur in residential fires, usually in single-family homes. In Orange County last year, 10 people were killed in residential fires. The year before, seven died. Many of those lost lives might have been saved--if their homes had been equipped with fire sprinklers.

The main argument raised against mandatory home sprinklers is their cost, which averages about $1 per square foot. Construction trade-offs resulting from the added safety that sprinklers provide can help reduce the total cost. And some insurance companies charge lower fire insurance rates for homes equipped with sprinklers. But cost must not be the only factor considered.

The main reason for having sprinklers is safety--preventing the loss of lives and property. Sprinklers can do that like no other firefighting system, except perhaps putting a firefighter in every home. From that standpoint, the benefits of home sprinklers far outweigh their costs.

Some Anaheim City Council members, however, remain most concerned about the added cost of sprinklers. One Chamber of Commerce official suggested an alternative: make residential fire sprinklers an option available to new homeowners.

That is not as good as a mandatory requirement, but it is a compromise that could help reduce fire losses. We suspect that many people would elect to have the fire-safety system as long as developers were required to fully inform potential buyers of their value and to make the sprinklers available to those who wanted them in their homes.

The high-rise public buildings without sprinklers must be made safer. So, too, must the homes, where most lives are lost to fires.