Ten years ago, I was asked to join the U.S. branch of the Institution of Fire Engineers, but I told then-president Bill Peterson that I didn’t feel qualified to join, as I’m not an engineer.

Peterson argued that I could still join because the organization isn’t for “fire engineers” as the term means in the United States; the term has a much broader definition overseas. In fact, the organization is open to anyone involved in the fire service.

“The organization basically means the “fire service” as we know it here in the U.S,” Bill Kehoe, the IFE’s current membership chairman, later told me. “Anybody with an interest in the fire service in the United States can join the IFE. We have people who are members of the U.S. branch of the IFE who are in every category from firefighter to city manager and everything in between.”

The IFE is based in Britain but serves as a global network for fire service personnel and industry professionals. After I was accepted as an associate member, I was given a world-view of the fire service with access to news, reports and networks of progressive-minded people.

Kehoe is passionate about the getting the U.S. fire service to learn how fire brigades and agencies in other countries work toward fire prevention and suppression and to see what challenges departments face around the world.

The IFE’s U.S. Branch applied for and was awarded a DHS Fire Prevention and Safety Grant in 2008 to organize Vision 20/20 a steering committee tasked with developing a comprehensive national strategic agenda for fire loss prevention. One of the Vision 20/20 subcommittees has created a short survey to determine where the U.S. fire service currently stands on issues of fire prevention and firefighter recruit training.

“We will analyze the data from the survey and we’ll use that information to begin developing a fire prevention, risk management, and fire loss reduction training program,” Kehoe said. “The one I’m specifically working on is to re-introduce fire prevention to the U.S. fire service and get them to adopt it versus the traditional ‘putting the wet stuff on the red stuff.’”

“If we can prevent the fire, we can save lives, firefighters wouldn’t get hurt and everybody wins,” he added.

The next meeting of the IFE U.S. Branch will be held in conjunction Fire-Rescue International next month in Dallas. The featured speaker will be Chris Gannon, a former British firefighter turned international fire consultant.

“I saw his photo and article last August in Fire Chief and thought that’s who we want to bring to the U.S. fire service,” Kehoe said. “Gannon will talk about how other departments around the world operate and it should be interesting.”

For more details about IFE or the meeting in Dallas, e-mail Kehoe.

Have you ever played “What If?” as a fire officer? It’s not hard to do. You come across an unusual building or construction site or a difficult intersection and you say: “What if I had a fire (or trench rescue or extrication) here? What would I need and how would I use it?”

This game has driven my wife crazy. A few years ago, she and I went shopping at a department store under renovation. As I came off the escalator, I scanned the congested construction area separated by a temporary wall from the sales floor. Although the building was sprinklered, I asked myself how would I advance a line from the outside (as the high-rise connection was behind the construction area), vent the smoke and remove the water in the event of a fire.

Less than a week later, my department fought the fire I had envisioned. A worked started the fire after store hours by using a torch next to an open can of flammable adhesive. We laid a standard fire line up the escalator, wyed it off so we had two hand lines, then vented the smoke through a skylight and removed water through the restroom. We scored points with both the mall and store management for containing the damage, which allowed them to open the next morning.

I recently saw the “What If?” game pay dividends at a fire in a nearby community. The department’s new chief came to my office to discuss his concerns about the water supply in his historic business district. He asked if he could special call two of our engines to help lay out 4,000 feet of supply line from a 12-inch water main should he have a major fire in that district. Such a fire occurred 10 days later when a candle in a window display fell over and ignited holiday decorations that spanned the length of the store. While that building was severely damaged, the fire did not spread to an adjacent store which was less than three feet from the involved structure nor to any of the other shops in that historic block. The reason in large part was due to the chief’s preplan for an adequate water supply.

Sometimes what separates a good officer from an exceptional officer is just playing “What If?” I say that knowing that it has been a while since I played it myself, but having the concerns of my fellow chief come true in such a short period of time reminded me that I had to do it more often in my community. Have you played the “What If” Game recently? If not, expand your mind and sharpen your strategy by taking the time to play it. It may pay dividends for you and your department in a very short time.

By Larry Rude

Each and every one of us in the fire service has the opportunity to make a difference in a very special way. On Sept. 21, code officials from the fire and building services came together in Minneapolis to make history. Almost 2,200 gathered to vote on a series of building and fire codes requiring sprinklers in newly constructed one- and two-family homes.

As a chief officer, I have been beating my drum across the country for years, explaining to people how fire sprinklers save lives. These words have been met with mixed response. Some say, “Show me the proof.” Others say, “It is too darned expensive to put fire sprinklers in a home. Builders can’t afford it and the customer will never pay the price.” I even hear, “What about the water damage? My insurance company will never pay to replace everything lost by water damage.”

Hollywood has done more to suppress the existence of home sprinkler systems then any one single industry. I sat in my living room last week and watched one of those action-packed movies. The hero, while trying to get away from his captors and save the heroine, inadvertently set off every sprinkler in the entire building. I am sure you have seen this movie and shook your head as I did. My neighbor and his wife were watching with me, and he jumped up and asked, “Is that going to happen to my house when the sprinklers go off?”

Thanks a lot, John McLane!

After three more cocktails and about an hour of explanation on fire suppression systems, my neighbor went home happy and feeling safe.

We, as fire chiefs, are also code officials. Fifty states across the county have adopted the International Family of Codes. This organization produces 15 codes designed to provide safety in our built environment. Most of you are familiar with the International Building and Fire Code, but you may not know about the International Residential Code, the International Plumbing Code, the International Mechanical Code, or many others.

Chiefs and firefighters have an opportunity that many never experience, nor even understand — and that is the ability to change or even modify existing codes, as well as add new codes to these documents. It is a shame we in the fire service are not taking more advantage of this tremendous democratic process. This process is making a difference by improving safety for everyone, including firefighters.

As a young firefighter, I didn’t truly understand the reasoning behind company-level fire inspection. All I knew was that it allowed us into the building to get a lay of the land. Fortunately I didn’t just follow directions without understanding, but asked questions. My chief, who was very involved and instrumental in the code process, took me under his wing. Now, many years later, I am testifying before industry, members of congress and code officials from every corner of the US, maintaining safety in our built environment. I find myself sharing the same views given to me with young officers and firefighters as they ask the same question, “why?”

All fire service members, including chief officers, must take a look at these opportunities and get involved with the ICC. We must be involved if we want our voices heard. Building officials have been doing this for years. As a chief, I speak about succession planning and what will happen when we old dogs leave the fire service. Well my friends, it is happening today faster than you may realize. I know of a number of fire departments that are doing away with their company level inspections. Some have cut out fire prevention activities and turned the fire code enforcement over to someone else. How do we in the fire service educate our people to take our place if we do not give them the tools and opportunities? There is no better place to develop leadership skills and prepare for executive positions than in the code development process.

Are you a Fire Chief that feels fire prevention is at the bottom of your budget line item account, and the first program that will be cut when money gets tight? Unfortunately, most of us do not keep statistics that show how many fires, deaths or injuries we have prevented just by adopting codes and standards.

Thirty years ago, I heard firefighters say, “I did not take this job to be an EMT.” Times have changed, and fire firevention and code enforcement is just another leadership path we can share with our upcoming leaders. It is all about choices for the future. If you do not make the choice, other code officials will make it for you. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough — the building and fire codes protect our members and we must stay active and participate in the code development process, and not just on single issues.

We would not ask our dentist to tune up our car or our doctor to design our fire station. So why would we let industry develop our fire codes? What legacies will you leaving behind? You have the ability to make a difference, when opportunity knocks you either listen or let it pass by. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.

Lawrence A. Rude is currently deputy fire chief with Maple Valley (Wash.) Fire & Life Safety. Rude started his fire service career in 1976 and has been a professional firefighter since 1981. Graduating from the University of Central Missouri, Rude has continued his education receiving additional degrees to include holding the Executive Fire Officer Certification from the National Fire Academy. He is currently a board member of the Safe Building Coordinating Council, a founding member of the Washington State Association of Fire Marshals chapter of ICC, a member of the International Fire Chiefs Association and the King County Fire Chiefs’ representative on the King County Technical Permit Review Committee. He has been a nationally active member of the International Code Council since its inception.

“Comfortably Numb” is a song from Pink Floyd’s The Wall; it’s also how Las Vegas Fire & Rescue Chief Ozzie Mirkhah described the U.S. fire service‘s response to 4,000-plus fire fatalities and 100-plus firefighter line-of-duty deaths each year.

This week, Mirkhah was a speaker at the Annual Residential Fire Sprinkler Summit hosted by the Illinois Fire Inspectors Association, Illinois Fire Chiefs Association and the Northern Illinois Fire Sprinkler Advisory Board. More than 270 fire chiefs, officers, inspectors and local government officials attended the program devoted to the importance of codes and residential fire sprinklers.

If you‘ve never heard Mirkhah speak, please, make a point of it. Not only does he passionately believe in fire prevention, but he is a voice of reason who asks some hard questions. Mirkhah‘s extensive research shows that billions of dollars spent on property loss from fire proves something is wrong with the fire service‘s reactive versus proactive approach to fire.

“The message is from my heart,” Mirkhah began. “I am a proud member of the fire service. More importantly, I am a public servant. We, as public servants, are trusted by our communities to provide the highest level of safety for our community and our country.”

It‘s lessons from the past that prove the fire service must plan for the future, and Mirkhah offers his passionate criticism as tough love. Mirkhah quoted Chief D.W. Brosnan, who in 1928 said that “Any person who is at all conversant with fire safety knows that at least 85% of fires could be prevented.” Brosnan had a fire sprinkler system in his home 60 years ago, as sprinkler technology became available in 1947.

“We had a means of stopping the fire problem back then and we failed to use it,” said Mirkhah. “Responding to fire alarms is not going to reduce the fires. We need to be more focused on fire prevention. We‘re still where we were 60 years ago! It‘s our responsibility to explain to the public why we had the technology and why our we‘re not using it.”

The U.S. Fire Administration‘s push for smoke alarm technology 30 years ago helped reduced the annual number of fire fatalities down from the ten thousands, but the number remains around 4,000 annually.

“Are we comfortably numb with 4,000 people dying each year?” Mirkhah asked. “We have the means to save those people. Shame on us! Is that the way to protect our people? Do we believe that the current statistic of 4,000 annual fire fatalities is an acceptable loss?”

Mirkhah said that in the four years of war in Iraq, “We have spent $433 billion and lost 3,464 soldiers. In that same time, we have spent a trillion dollars in fire loss and lost three-and-a-half times that many citizens [fire fatalities]. What is your exit strategy?”

Mirkhah asked the attendees for their game plan and about accountability. “Why don‘t we have to be accountable for our actions? The president of General Motors is accountable to the stockholders.”

I remember, it took 10 years of budget cuts, liability issues and new technology to prove that preventive maintenance on emergency vehicles was worth the investment. It took another 10 years for exercise to be acknowledged as important for firefighter health and it‘s taken five years to understand we need to change the culture of the fire service with regards to firefighter safety. How long before fire prevention becomes an accepted part of the mission?

Every day fire marshals, prevention officers, public educators, inspectors, plans examiners and fire engineers make decisions that will affect the public for years to come as they deal with new construction or enforcement of the existing fire code. These decisions guard the welfare of the community and make it safer for residents and firefighters should a building catch fire.

Let me share with you one victory and suggest how we can all share in another. For the past several weeks, my fire inspector has been working with the county building department on plans review and construction inspections of a lightweight frame building to be used as a “high hazard” occupancy that will be operational in approximately three months. Our primary concern is that the clientele who will use this building may or may not have the physical or mental capacity to exit the facility should a fire occur. For that reason the designs of the fire sprinkler, alarm and suppression systems are of paramount importance.

The initial site plan and construction drawings were submitted without complete sprinkler plans. The sprinkler plans were delayed while several discussions ensued on the most effective means to run a new 6-inch main for an additional fire hydrant and the sprinkler system. This new main, however, required at least one easement from a nearby property owner. To avoid construction delays, both the city and county agreed to a partial building permit for the foundation and framing while awaiting these completed sprinkler plans.

In the meantime, the fire department specified that the fire department connection needed to be moved closer to the new hydrant so that it freed the driveway for ladder company operations and allowed remaining fire apparatus better access to a third means of entry and egress from the building to assist with evacuation. As the deadline for the final sprinkler drawings approached the city water works at the suggestion of the fire department agreed that the new 6-inch main could be run from an existing tap on a 12-inch water main that would save the contractor time, cost and the legal entanglement caused by the easement.

In exchange for the concession, the department required the addition of an OS&Y valve with a tamper alarm to shut down the sprinkler system from the outside of the structure should the need arise. With the solution to the easement problem solved, the architect and sprinkler contractor quickly finished the sprinkler plans that included the added requirements and satisfied both the building and fire officials.

In working cooperatively, we hope this high-hazard occupancy will be free of any fire fatalities. While we possibly scored a life-long victory for fire safety in this building, there are many of us who are also working on a cooperative front to make changes in the national culture that will impact fire and life safety in the same way that working smoke alarms started to reduce fire fatalities beginning nearly 35 years ago.

Vision 2020 held a successful Web cast on Feb. 13 with more than 750 participants from across the country. The preliminary suggestions shared on that day will be the basis for a three-day symposium in Washington, D.C., late next month hosted by the Institution of Fire Engineers with a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. The symposium will bring together some of the best minds in fire and life safety from many other fire safety organizations to determine the next steps in reducing fire deaths, injuries and loss.

While these results are not yet known, it may take the form of several initiatives such as the self-extinguishing cigarette to reduce the greatest source of fire fatalities. It may be a wider use of fire sprinklers, especially in residential occupancies, or it may be some as yet unknown safety initiative. Whatever recommendations are forthcoming; stay tuned for what may be the beginning of the most significant victory in the reduction of fire loss since the advent of the smoke alarm.

When I recently purchased new living-room furniture, I glanced at the label and asked the salesperson if the material was flame-resistant? She said yes, but I knew better.

Last month I attended Underwriters Laboratories‘ two-day Smoke Characterization Seminar. The sessions covered fire smoke basics, hazards and research, and the audience included firefighters, training officers, arson investigators, Centers for Disease Control officials, and smoke alarm manufacturers.

“When I look at this room, I don‘t think of tables and chairs, I think about fuel,” said J. Thomas Chapin, Ph.D., UL‘s director of research and development in his keynote address about fire and the smoke continuum. “You can‘t have a fire if you don‘t have fuel.”

Chapin quickly translated scientific terms into understandable language. He explained the fire event timeline, mitigation operations and the concept of fire rewind. “One of the most significant ways to improve life safety is with early intervention,” he said. “By rewinding the fire event, we can focus on new and improved forms of intervention.”

Chapin suggested five means of early intervention:

• Early detection with smoke and fire detectors;
  


• Early suppression with residential sprinklers;
  


• Efficient containment with fire doors, walls and floors;
  


• Creation of a hardened environment with fire-resistant furnishings; and
  


• Improved education and training for key audiences.
  

Chapin showed video of tests conducted to study fire and the differences between mattresses, one that was Consumer Product Safety Commission–compliant and one that was not. He also showed an upholstered chair fire that was an eye-opener.

“Upholstered chairs have three-times the chemical energy of wood,” Chapin cautioned. “The energy we’re building into our homes is three-times higher.” That’s because the raw materials are different, and much of it is imported

Chapin added that a frequent problem in universities and colleges is that students will bring foam padding to put on top of their dorm beds. The synthetic fibers add to the potential fuel load.

“Synthetics are a part of our lives — polyurethane material in the soles of shoes, cellulose in newspapers and polyesters in fleece materials,” he said.

At home, I pulled the label under my couch‘s cushion and looked closer: polyurethane foam and polyester fiber. According to Chapin‘s PowerPoint, my couch has a heat of combustion of over 10,000 BTUs per pound — that‘s not a couch, that’s kindling.

Make your choice in gifts cotton and wool this holiday season; they are fire-safe choices.

Previously, I looked at how clusters of homes on smaller plots of land increase fire hazards. In some cases, these homes are less than 10 feet apart. Fire chiefs also must view the challenges associated with the narrow streets in cluster developments from yet another angle — the actual fireground operations and tactics. Apparatus placement is significant in fireground operations. The narrow streets and long dead ends present major challenges to response and further delay rescue and suppression efforts.

In fighting fires, the actual battle is against time. Considering that fire grows exponentially with time, the longer it takes for firefighters to be dispatched, arrive at the scene, set up, and finally put water on the fire, the bigger the fire we have to face.

Before putting the wet stuff on the red stuff though, we need to vent the building. Considering narrow street frontage, laddering the front of these cluster homes in itself is challenging even on flat grade. Raising a 28-foot ground ladder to the second-story window on the side of these cluster dwellings might be impossible. And the 35-foot ground ladder would not be adequate to safely get to the roof of a 3-story dwellings.

Of course, that is even more challenging when the exterior wall is only three feet from the property line. Even trying to raise the 35-foot ground ladder from the neighbor‘s house (which is also only three feet away, on the other side of the property line) to reach the roof would result in a very steep and unsafe climbing angle of around 80 degrees.

One way or another we will eventually get it done, but all that takes time. Do we have much time to spare, considering the lightweight truss construction of these clustered dwellings and their collapse potential? The more time we spend on setting up, the less time firefighters have for interior search and rescue and roof ventilation.

Using aerial units is much safer for our rescue and ventilation operations, but trying to get a ladder truck in these narrow streets is itself a challenge. If the engines arrive first and are staged in front of the dwelling, getting the aerial in a usable position would be even more challenging.

Fire station locations and area coverage, apparatus allocations and staffing, future planning, and the new fire station design, are the other important angles that the fire chief should consider in reviewing the challenges associated with these cluster developments. In the west, most aerials were stationed around downtown areas where the majority of the commercial mid-rises or high-rises were constructed. With the urban sprawl of the past decades, the suburban fire stations generally were designed the house a couple of fire engines and a rescue unit. After all, most of those tract developments were far apart and only two stories high.

But with these new 3-story cluster housing developments, aerials are much more essential, and the extensive travel time to get them to the suburbs from the downtown stations is detrimental to operations.

The solution might not be as easy as merely relocating the aerials to suburban fire stations. More than likely, the aerials are too long and won’t fit in the bays of the existing fire stations. Unless, of course, parking the aerials outside is an option that you are willing to entertain. Again we might be able to mitigate this situation if these cluster dwellings were protected with fire sprinklers.

Also most fire departments use their cookie-cutter fire station designs for their future stations as they had done in the past, so fitting the aerials into the fire stations might still be an afterthought.

The fire service needs to get actively involved in planning commission meetings and public hearings, especially when such cluster developments are being proposed. Fire station location, apparatus placement, equipment, and staffing requirements are very important and costly factors that the fire chief and the jurisdiction must consider upfront.

Often for the larger master-plan communities, the developers must pay impact fees or are required to provide land or even build a new fire station for their development. Fire chiefs must have a strategic plan and should evaluate such proposals in great detail. Inadequate fire station design will not be the answer, and insufficient staffing, equipment and apparatus only compound the problem.

Elected officials and the top administrators must be fully aware of all these long-term risks and the expenditures. A detailed cost/benefit analysis would prove to them that residential fire sprinkler systems are invaluable in saving lives and the most efficient and cost-effective way to protect our communities.

Economic development and tax-base increases are indeed the absolute necessities for the thriving communities. But then the key is having long-term strategic view for the community‘s development and nourishing sustained smart growth.

These cluster developments are going to be with us for a very long time. We can and must be proactive and provide for the highest level of fire protection and life-safety both for the occupants and for firefighters. Allow for economic growth and high-density design, and yet provide the most efficient and highest level of life-safety and fire protection. Residential fire sprinkler systems are an essential part of the community‘s smart growth.

As I watched the memorial service in Charleston with the nine flag-draped caskets, I thought about the legendary Francis Brannigan, who said, “When a combustible structure is involved in fire, the building is the enemy, and you must know the enemy.” But I believe that we need to take that even a step further. The problem doesn‘t start with the building; it starts with the construction codes. The building is an object, not an enemy. Our real enemies are the ones who allow such buildings to be built with little regard for the occupants‘ safety and even less regard for the firefighters‘ safety.

Considering that investigations still are underway in Charleston, I won‘t be specific to that particular fire. Some of their earliest reports, though, mentioned that multiple human errors and failures in housekeeping policies and procedures contributed to the ignition and the fast propagation of that fire. Those same human factors historically have been at the root of most commercial and residential fires. Take a look at the recent catastrophic multiple-fatality fires. Through June, there have been a total of 247 total deaths in 60 fires, and 142 (57%) of those fatalities have been children.

And it is precisely because of these failures and human errors that I strongly believe in fail-safe, built-in automatic protection.

I think that the Charleston Fire Chief Rusty Thomas might have been correct, in a way, when he said, “sprinklers would not have put out the fire but would have at least slowed it.” Had the fire sprinklers been installed, they would have most likely slowed if not stopped the fire progression. At the very least, they could have prevented flashover and catastrophic structural failure.

While fire sprinklers can‘t prevent fires, they can minimize the adverse consequences of failure once the fire has ignited. That is why I believe so strongly in fire sprinklers.

Also let me explain my use of the term “enemy.” I realize that it has a strong negative connotation and that it might sound contrary to what I have been writing about the importance of working with building officials in the International Code Council process and with the builders in the National Association of Home Builders to educate them to cooperatively change construction codes.

In my mind, the word “enemy” doesn‘t exclusively mean prolonged antagonistic relationships. Having an enemy, opponent or adversary truly calls for more diplomacy and negotiations. I don‘t view sprinkler opponents as mortal enemies in a classical term, but as adversaries that we must defeat with sound logic and science in the various code arenas.

With all due respect to our worthy adversaries in the code development process, their delay in acknowledging the value of fire sprinklers and embracing the use of such technology in all new construction is only prolonging the agony. They know quite well, especially after ICC final code hearings a couple of months ago, that it is only a matter of time before fire sprinkler systems protect all newly constructed homes in America. But the postponement is causing thousands of civilians‘ and firefighters‘ lives to be lost nationally each year.

I‘m not pointing the finger and merely blaming sprinkler opponents for the fire problem. We should first look at ourselves before blaming others. We in the fire service share that burden, too, and our low priority for fire prevention and lack of strong participation in the code development process are significant contributors to the magnitude of the fire problem in our country. If we truly want to address the fire problem in our country, we must first rearrange our priorities. Fire sprinklers save firefighters‘ lives, too.

Increasingly, firefighters are responding to situations where the R-13 residential sprinkler system has done its job: early activation for quick extinguishment or substantial control of a fire in its incipient stage. These systems are becoming more prevalent in the multi-family dwellings across the United States, but hopefully the fire service will become more successful in getting more of these systems installed in single-family dwellings. Residential sprinkler systems, unlike their commercial system cousins that are designed to protect property, are designed to provide for life safety by:

1. Providing a larger “window of escapability,” more time for occupants to evacuate the dwelling and




2. Keeping fire from reaching the point of flashover, thereby protecting firefighters.

As numbers of R-13 systems in the country continue to grow, fire service leaders need to ensure that our fire officers and firefighters have the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities to work with these systems to effectively ensure extinguishment of the fire and effectively address property conservation, the third incident priority. Most departments emphasize the first two incident priorities, life safety and incident stabilization, much more than property conservation. We remove heat, smoke and standing water following suppression activities, and then we cover window and door openings and return the building to its owner.

The fire service needs to adopt a new paradigm regarding property conservation. The lightweight building materials used in today’s family dwellings are very susceptible to water damage, especially from prolonged water exposure. When the fire occurs on an upper floor, gravity is a powerful force that exposes more interior exposures to water. We need to become more proactive in addressing the third incident priority, especially when sprinkler systems have been activated.

How can we meet this challenge? We need to focus some of our training and drilling efforts toward developing the salvage-technician skills of our fire officers and firefighters. Most of what we know we learned in entry-level firefighter training, and for many that training was a long time ago. Even for our newer folks, the amount of time allocated to the development of salvage skills is very limited; entry-level training programs tend to focus on development of fire suppression KSAs.

What should our training and drilling focus on? Here a couple of key objectives:

• Learn the location of all the occupancies in your district with R-13 sprinkler systems installed. Become familiar with the location of fire department connections and the control valves for those systems.




• Be aggressive in assigning responsibility for control of the system to a fire officer so that the system can be shut down as soon as fire control is achieved.




• Make an aggressive interior fire attack to get a fire stream to the seat of the fire and ensure complete extinguishment of the fire. Communicate to the incident commander as soon as possible when the system can be shut down. Continue to size-up the fire area for hot spots.




• Make aggressive water removal a key objective of the incident action plan. Tasks should include the use of water vacuum equipment as well as the covering of property and floors below the fire.




• Prompt homeowners and property managers to obtain the services of a professional disaster restoration company as soon as possible. Most of the water-removal equipment that we carry on our apparatus provides a good first step in water removal, but it isn‘t as effective and efficient as the water extraction equipment used by professional disaster restoration companies in minimizing water damage after the fire.

As R-13 residential sprinklers become more commonplace in our communities, our knowledge and skills as salvage control technicians will become more commonly in our efforts to conserve property following a fire. Many people, especially those outside the fire service, believe that residential sprinkler systems cause more damage than the fire because we continue to let the builders and developers control the residential sprinkler agenda. Those same people do not know that sprinkler systems keep the fire from rapidly growing to the point that it can trap occupants or inflict substantial damage on the structure. By becoming more skilled and practiced in salvage operations at these types of calls, we will have a positive influence on their perceptions. If we can do that, we‘ll increase public support for the installation of R-13 systems in our communities.

I struggled a bit in writing this blog because I kept having mixed feelings about wanting to report the residential sprinkler initiative and promote fire chief involvement in the development of building and fire codes in the same paper. So what I allowed to happen with this writing is a mix of the two. Sometimes you cannot separate inter-related subjects as each depends on the other for background or linked information, so I’ll let you try to sort it out. In an earlier blog I wrote about the residential sprinkler initiative that was being proposed to the International Residential Code as part of the International Code Council family of codes. After witnessing a code hearing for the first time, I found it an intense but understandable process with which fire chiefs need to be actively involved. To get to a national requirement for residential sprinklers, we need to be involved in this code process.

Fire Chiefs and Code Development

I have heard frequent comments about the negative aspects of building codes that decrease mass of materials and make the firefighter’s job even more dangerous than it already is. Codes that reduce the window of time that the firefighter can either stand on or under floors that are supported by beams engineered to be just over the threshold necessary to support a designed load but that can be consumed in minutes may just put the firefighter on the scene at the worst time, just before potential collapse. There are many more examples where, for the sake of economy and efficiency, engineering has facilitated a built world that is not as forgiving to firefighters as it once had been.

So what are we going to do about it? No doubt about it, the building industry controls the building code, and maybe this is their domain and should be this way. But we have had little impact in this arena over the years and need to. Chiefs, we all need to join the International Code Council and provide staff who can be involved in committee work — at least in those areas that are critical to safety and survival of firefighters — and ultimately vote at the code hearings. Considering that we are afforded significant opportunity to positively affect the codes, the price of membership ($280 for governments representing populations greater then 150,000; there are graduated prices based on population) is not bad. This gives you voting opportunity for up to 12 staff. Click here to see ICC membership information.

The ICC is a somewhat new animal to the code world. It was formed in 2003 by combining the legacy codes we used for years, such as Building Officials and Code Administrators, the Uniform Building Code developed by the former International Conference of Building Officials, and Southern Building Code Congress International. Fire service members in some areas of the country have been working over the last couple of years to adjust the new International Building Code to accommodate their concerns.

These officials found that, after a consensus code was developed to accommodate all three legacy codes, some good features were lost from the former codes. In particular, the California Fire Chiefs Association has been very aggressive at committee and ultimately in votes at the hearings to try to make adjustments to the IBC. This past year has seen a lot of hard work by the California group and other fire service ICC members to make adjustments and hold onto some of the more restrictive language in IBC relating to height and area allowances. While this critical work was going on with height and area code language, the fire service and fire protection industry also were working to move a code requirement for residential sprinklers from the appendix to the body of the code. We need to continue this activity and increase it significantly if we are going to be able to get on equal footing with the building industry and improve fire and life safety for firefighters.

Speaking with Jim Tidwell, retired chief of the Fort Worth (Texas) Fire Department and the ICC director of fire service activities, he describes the fire service’s ability to come in at the end of the code development and revision process and still have the opportunity to make needed changes. Proposed codes do not become set until a final hearing and vote before the ICC government members. It is strictly a final vote from the government members to finalize a code change. What has been the norm is that it is mostly government building officials who are directly involved in this voting. The final process occurred the week of May 20 in Rochester, N.Y., and even though the fire service and fire protection industry (because this was an effort that involved all fire service players) were not successful, we did make a statement about being committed to having an influence on the codes.

Now is the time to apply for membership on ICC Committees. These committees are formed anew after the final hearing. One important feature of ICC Committee involvement is that committee expenses are fully covered by the ICC.

Residential Sprinklers Come Close

At the Rochester ICC code hearings, the fire service was able to vote down committee action to sustain the code and not allow the residential sprinkler requirement into the code body. (One of the core values of ICC Committees is to sustain the code’s status quo.) Once the floor had overturned the recommendation of the committee, it was then necessary to have a new recommendation to take the place of the defeated recommendation. Successful achievement of a floor amendment requires a vote of 2/3 majority (a super majority) of the floor to sustain the new recommendation. The fire service came up 80 plus votes short of the super majority. Upon failing to get the votes, the original committee action, as described in the ICC rules, stands.

So it was that close this year to the fire service obtaining a national residential sprinkler requirement. In the future we need to be proactive and drive the code process as much as possible as opposed to merely reacting. While there were some excellent amendments achieved at the code hearings, with a super-majority requirement we cannot depend on this as a strategy. The National Association of Home Builders spent over a quarter of a million dollars to fight the fire service on residential sprinklers.

We need to be involved in the code process throughout the whole cycle, which means developing and exercising more influence and participation in the committee work. You have heard that it often takes more energy to solve a problem then it took to create the problem. In the ICC process of code amendment, it takes more energy, resources, converted opposition, etc. to overturn the action of the committee than it took for the committee to take its normal action. If there are areas of building codes that we want to influence, we need to be able to have aggressive involvement throughout the process. By the way, our concern for lightweight construction could be offset by residential sprinklers, which are designed to reduce the potential for a fire reaching flashover. Maybe this is our trade-off for allowing lightweight structural materials that do not stand up well to a fire that gets into the structure.

We may never be able to convert home builders into residential sprinkler advocates, but we can educate them on every detail of how they work, what they are and what they are not. The builder associations should be hounded by us with our sales pitch. We need to get them to sit through a workshop and demo on how sprinklers work. Maybe more important then convincing the builders is to market the good sense of residential sprinklers to the government building officials who, as a group, do not understand the technology and fear that sprinklers will create nightmares for them in their work world. Like the code committees, the building officials try to achieve calm and normalcy among their customers (builders), so if we can help them do this we may be able to convince them that including sprinklers in the residential code is not going to be a bad thing. It was the government building officials who did not support our efforts in Rochester. They are a critical group.

What are the next steps in selling the need for residential sprinklers? To begin with, fire chiefs at the local level and fire protection professionals can start today by opening a dialogue with local building officials. Meet with them for the sole purpose of showing them how these systems work. Bring in groups like Fire Team USA to assist in a regional education workshop on sprinklers. Borrow or build a side-by-side sprinkler demo. There’s nothing like visualizing how well the technology works, and building a sprinkler demonstration trailer is an excellent and relevant use of a Fire Prevention and Safety Grant.

We also can try to create the next successful safety feature that people just have to have. Somewhere out there is an influential person who can turn residential sprinklers into the next vehicle airbag, child safety seat, anti-smoking or Mothers Against Drunk Driving campaign. We need to copy the model for those programs and convert our product, residential sprinklers, into something everyone must have. We were close at the hearings to obtaining requirements for residential sprinklers in the International Residential Code. We start today to make sure we have the IRC committee recommendation during the next code cycle.