2 in 3 UCI Buildings Have No Sprinklers

About two-thirds of the buildings at UC Irvine lack firefighting sprinklers, including two dormitories, five child-care centers, a Montessori school and the Irvine Barclay Theatre, according to information the school released Wednesday.

Though the buildings apparently met fire codes at the time they were constructed, UCI Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone pledged Wednesday to undertake a campuswide review of fire safety, including whether more buildings need sprinklers, after an explosion and fire Monday in a chemistry laboratory injured a graduate student.

“It could or could not mean more sprinklering, but we’re going to look in detail at every structure,” Cicerone said.

UC Irvine officials will have a lot to review, because only 52 of about 140 buildings have sprinklers. And many of those have sprinklers only in certain areas.

Details were not available Wednesday about when the buildings were constructed and which codes were in place at the time. It also could not be determined how UCI stacks up against other campuses in the state.

UC spokesman Michael Reese said university officials were “certainly aware of the need to provide a range of upgrades for many of our buildings, from seismic safety to fire safety. That’s a huge part of our future capital needs.”

Whether a building has sprinklers generally depends on when it was constructed and what building codes were in force.

Fire officials said that the building involved in Monday’s fire was not built to county requirements. Because it was built in 1990 on state land, five-story Frederick Reines Hall needed to meet only the state building code, which was less strict than Orange County’s.

“If that building were built anywhere else in the county of Orange, it would have been fully sprinklered,” said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Kirk Summers.

Rebekah Gladson, the campus architect, said money was partly at issue in that decision, because the state allocated only enough money to meet California standards. When a building is renovated, though, it typically is brought up to the current code, she said.

“Any time we find a facility like a UCI . . . you’re going to have buildings of whole different vintages, so you’re going to have stuff built to different code standards,” Summers said. “I think everybody wants to make it sound like one big conspiracy. It’s not. They’ve complied with their codes as they see them.”

Since the mid-1990s, Summers said, all new buildings at UC Irvine have had sprinklers.

With its concrete and steel construction, and walls and doors built to beat back flames, Reines Hall “functioned as it was supposed to,” Summers said. “They built a good building.”

Still, he said, fire officials would prefer sprinklers in every building.

Summers said that universities throughout the nation probably would be in the same situation as UC Irvine, with older buildings not meeting current fire codes.

All UCLA dorms have sprinklers, according to Marisa Osorio, a UCLA spokeswoman. But UCLA has high-rise dorms that tower over its Orange County counterpart’s two- and three-story structures. UCI’s four-story dorm, Palo Verde, has sprinklers.

UCI officials said sprinklers are not necessarily the best fire safety measure in all settings. Cicerone, whose own atmospheric sciences lab is in Reines Hall, said organic chemists say water would make some fires, such as those involving liquid metals, worse.

“Put water on them and they explode,” the chancellor said. “We always have to approach the subject of how to prevent and suppress fires very carefully.”

Toxic chemicals abound at research universities such as UCI. Just 80 to 100 yards away from Reines, in Rowland Hall, is a small nuclear reactor. The reactor core is in the basement, in an aluminum pool under 25 feet of water, set in bedrock. While Rowland is only partly equipped with sprinklers, a host of safety features have been built into and around the reactor, including walls that can withstand fire for three hours.

When the fire started in Reines, Rowland also was evacuated.

Wendell Brase, vice chancellor of administration, said that dorms built since about 1990 have sprinklers. When the dorm Verano Place Apartments was built in 1966, sprinklers probably were not required anywhere in the country.

In the decade he has been at UCI, Brase said, the tendency has been to install sprinklers even when they were not required. “We believe that is a good feature,” he said.

Many buildings on campus do have sprinklers, including the main library, the student center and several, but not all, engineering and social sciences halls. Almost all of the medical sciences buildings have sprinklers.

Without the equipment are the Verano Preschool, the Infant/Toddler Center and the University Montessori School. Irvine Barclay Theatre, where musical and other shows are staged, has no sprinklers, according to UCI.

Most of the arts buildings also lack the equipment, as well as at least two campus restaurants.

Cicerone said that an array of features fight fires in buildings.

There are smoke detectors, fire doors and fire walls that block air from feeding a blaze. Materials that are tough to burn can also be used.

“In smaller buildings, you might convince yourself you can get people out of a building very quickly if you have a warning, like a smoke detector,” Cicerone said, “but in a high-rise, it might take so long to get people out that firefighters want water.”