Fighting Fires With Sprinkler Systems

For the sake (in reality, the lives) of everybody who lives, works, shops and does any type of activity within a structure, the time is ripe for home sprinklers.

You can rebuild a house that burns when the insurance pays off. However, the loss of life remains just that, a loss of life. Sprinklers in single-family residences serve as another part of a fire safety system your local fire department wishes you to have.

Any firefighter will tell you that they hope never to find a body in a house fire. Sprinkler systems save lives and property. Consider that a sprinkler is an open water faucet with the spout blocked off with a piece of metal. As soon as the room in which a fire has started reaches a preset temperature, this piece of metal melts and allows the water to either control the fire until firefighters arrive or, in some cases, put out the fire.

If you turn off the sprinkler system, it will not function. If you paint over the sprinkler head, it may not work. If you stack boxes underneath the head, the water spray may be blocked from the fire. If your wood shake roof is on fire, your sprinkler head inside the house won’t do you much good.

Chief Craig Halker of the Long Beach Fire Department has stated that a sprinkler is considered to be a firefighter on duty 24 hours a day, ready to go with a nozzle when fire strikes. This sprinkler/firefighter doesn’t get paid or go on vacation and never gets sick or injured. Of course you still need human firefighters to do all the other duties that a sprinkler wasn’t designed for.

For all you Doubting Thomases who say the cost of installing a residential sprinkler system is prohibitive, consider the alternative. People will die in house fires. Like the smoke detector, the sprinkler will help save lives. Unlike the smoke detector, the sprinkler helps reduce property loss. San Clemente and its Fire Department are giving us a valuable and free lesson. Will we learn?

THOMAS DOMINGUEZ

La Habra