Be Proactive and Beat the Fire – From USFA

Be Proactive and Beat the Fire
You and your fire department can help shape the future of fire safety in new homes and building developments. Establish relationships with home builders and renovators in your area and encourage them to install residential fire sprinklers in each new home. Work with construction permit offices to identify new home construction and renovation projects and provide homeowners with information about the benefits of residential fire sprinklers. Your department can establish a community of new and renovated sprinkler-equipped homes that will ultimately put fewer firefighter lives at risk of entering a fully engaged home fire.  Work with builders and homeowners now so that residents and firefighters will be safer in the event of a home fire.
Quick Sprinkler Facts
• Sprinkler systems exceed a 95 percent “fail-safe” status in laboratory testing. Sprinklers are individually activated only if there is a fire in which the heat escalates past that sprinkler’s trigger point.
• Modern residential sprinklers are designed to respond to fire faster than commercial or industrial sprinkler systems, because they are more sensitive to heat.
• A sprinkler costs about $1.61 per square foot. This cost is about the same as upgraded cabinets or carpet.
• Installing a sprinkler system has the potential to lower insurance rates by 5-15% by meeting code requirements.
• When both smoke alarms and fire sprinklers are present in a home, the risk of dying in a fire is reduced by 82 percent, when compared to a residence without either.

You can download a consumer-friendly version of the U.S. Fire Administration’s (USFA) residential fire sprinkler fact sheet from the new Install. Inspect. Protect. smoke alarm campaign Web site at http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/campaigns/smokealarms/ (English) and http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/espanol/detectoresdehumo/ (Spanish).