In honor of National Fire Prevention week, which runs from the sixth to October 10, the National Fire Sprinkler association recently put on an entire fire safety demonstration. And they aren’t the only ones, a number of fire stations and companies are putting on fire safety demonstrations for the next weeks to come. It’s just not because of the National Fire Prevention week though; there’s been a few states, specifically Massachusetts that has called into question just how effective sprinklers truly are for their cost.
The demonstration by the National association took two buildings that are side by side and set off a controlled fire. One of these buildings had fire sprinklers installed throughout the building, while the other didn’t. As you can imagine the one without fire sprinklers burned to the ground in little time, while the one that had fire sprinklers was able to eventually put the entire fire out.
And yet states still argue that costs that can reach up to 20,000 for a large building to pay for sprinkler systems is just not worth the building surviving a fire. Damage still occurs but the fire still gets extinguished and the building can mostly be saved. The problem is that states only think of the buildings being saved by the fire and not about the people inside them. If you are in a building and sprinklers go off, you are getting out of that building, and the water from the sprinklers will slow down the fire to give you time to get out.
Hopefully with all these demonstrations coming up and the ones that past, states will reconsider the ideas that sprinklers just aren’t worth it. Because what kind of price can you put on people surviving?
