Fire Chief Sounds the Alarm Over Library : Burbank: Immediate installation of sprinklers or smoke detectors at the remodeled facility is urged.

Citing the 1986 fire that devastated the Los Angeles Central Library, the Burbank Fire Department has asked the city to immediately install sprinklers or smoke detectors in its main library, which were not included in a $500,000 remodeling last year.

The chairwoman of the Burbank board of library trustees responded that the board will consider a smoke alarm, but sprinklers would be too expensive. “In its present condition, the Central Library is susceptible to a major fire loss if it is not detected in its initial stage,” Fire Chief Michael W. Davis said in a report to the trustees Wednesday night.

Burbank’s central library, which has 240,000 volumes, was renovated last year to remove asbestos and add earthquake-resistant bookshelves.

Under city zoning codes, the library is not required to retrofit the building with sprinklers or smoke detectors. But some residents are pressuring the city to do so, joined by Marc Gillenson, a former member of the library board, who has sharply criticized his former colleagues.

“I don’t know why we didn’t do this earlier,” Raymonde Izay, chairwoman of the library board, said in an interview Thursday. Pressed to explain the board’s inaction, she said, “There was never any money appropriated for that.”

Davis, in his report to the five-member board, cited a 1986 report prepared by his department after the Los Angeles library fire, also urging that the city equip the library with sprinklers.

There was no indication why the city did nothing in 1986.

A sprinkler system would cost the city more than $100,000, but smoke detectors could be installed for about $20,000, Izay said.

Davis said smoke detectors would be acceptable, in part because Burbank’s main fire station is only about 200 feet from the library.

“It would have been very difficult and expensive to add a sprinkler system,” Izay said. Instead, she proposed, with Davis’ support, that the library install smoke detectors connected to alarms in the main fire station.

Libraries around the state are increasingly adding smoke detectors or sprinklers, Burbank fire and library officials said. Although the sprinklers could go off by accident and damage books, Davis said in his report, “water damage from a discharging sprinkler head is minimal in comparison to the operation of a fire hose” that would be needed if a fire spread for lack of early methods of control.

Davis went on to state that sprinkler systems are designed so that only those sprinklers in a fire area actually discharge water. “Typically in a library fire, control and extinguishment is achieved with only one or two heads functioning,” Davis said in the report.

“Ninety-eight percent of all fires are controlled by sprinklers. Sprinkler system malfunctions are almost solely the result of tampering or poor maintenance,” he stated.

Izay asked Holly Hinman, director of library services, to seek bids for a smoke-detector system. The next scheduled meeting of the board, which usually meets monthly, is Feb. 10, but Izay said she plans to call a special meeting sooner to review the bids.

“We want our precious library to be protected as soon as possible,” Izay said. “We’re trying to do it as fast as we can.”