A DAY of emotion and hard-headed economics and politics’ was how one speaker aptly described Sprinklers Around the World – a recent conference that provided a platform for pro-sprinkler stakeholders to discuss the latest moves to improve the take-up of residential and commercial sprinkler systems.
The event in February was hosted by the National Fire Sprinkler Network (NFSN) and the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group, and supported by BlazeMaster CPVC and Staysafe UK.
A range of speakers outlined the varying progress being made to advance the sprinkler agenda in England, Scotland and Wales, as well as further afield, with issues around installation costs, firefighter safety and sprinkler-related data and experience also discussed.
Moves in Scotland
Standing in for Peter Wishart MP, Lynsey-Anne Marwick outlined the latest situation in Scotland. She explained that the blaze at Rosepark care home in Glasgow in 2004, in which 14 elderly residents lost their lives, had acted as a wake-up call, putting the importance of sprinklers sharply into focus.
Joint working is the key to delivering the pro-sprinkler agenda, said Ms Marwick. ‘We need to build on the community planning concept to develop networks of individuals, partnerships and organisations to take forward this collective agenda, although we recognise that this must be delivered within a pressing economic climate.’
Looking at the challenge ahead, she said that, despite the long-term decline in fires and fire deaths, Scotland continues to have the highest recorded fire deaths per million population in the UK, and the number of fire fatalities remains at an unacceptable level compared to other European countries. In 2007, 43 people died and 1,530 were injured in dwelling fires in the country.
Although the targeted approach to protecting high-risk and vulnerable people is working well, she also stressed the need to pool energy, ideas and resources creatively without duplicating activity; and to regulate smartly and avoid excessive bureaucracy.
Long-term challenge
One suggestion is for a Sprinkler Challenge – an initiative to find a new, more cost-effective long-term way to deliver wide-scale domestic sprinkler systems.
This comes amid ongoing concerns over cost of domestic sprinklers. A recent study found that a low-cost residential system would range from £340 in a new build, to around £1,500 retrofitted. However, a pilot project of nine properties found the total cost to be £46,000 – much higher than indicative costs.
Although the Scottish Government’s recent report, Scotland Together (also see p.XX), argues that 80% of home fire deaths in the country could have been prevented by sprinklers, it also acknowledges the hard economic reality, concluding that the wide-scale installation of systems in homes throughout Scotland would cost nearly £7bn – an investment that would be difficult to justify in today’s economic climate.
Ms Marwick also discussed legislative requirements. She explained that Scottish Building Regulations currently contain a mandatory standard requirement for the installation of automatic fire suppression systems in residential care homes, sheltered housing, shopping centres, large warehouses and high-rise domestic buildings over 18m. These regulations are currently being reviewed and the proposal is to extend the scope of residential sprinklers to allow greater design freedoms, including open-plan living arrangements for low-rise houses. It is also expected that the regulations will be extended, from October 2010, to require the installation of systems in all new primary and secondary schools.
Welsh legislation
Attention then switched to Wales, and the major efforts of Ann Jones AM to develop a Legislative Competence Order (LCO) to make sprinklers mandatory in all new-build domestic dwellings in Wales (also see p.XX).
In January, Mrs Jones’s LCO received approval from cross-party Parliamentary Committees in both Wales and Westminster. The Order is expected to pass votes in both Houses of Parliament before gaining Royal assent in the coming weeks. Mrs Jones will then be in a position to introduce an Assembly Measure to enforce the objectives of her LCO.
The LCO has been progressing since July 2007, during which time Mrs Jones has endured administrative and political delays, but she has now gained cross-party and Government support for what she calls ‘quality, workable and common sense legislation that underlines the overwhelming moral and technical case for sprinklers in homes’. Her argument has focused on the human impact of sprinklers, and the protection they offer individuals, families and firefighters.
Mrs Jones told the conference: ‘I am eager to make the most of the news this legislation is creating to raise awareness so that sprinkler systems are seen as an absolute necessity for architects and public authorities. Now that the public’s attention has been pricked, we can argue that, for example, any new hospital build or conversion made should include sprinklers.’
She also spoke of the need to dispel arguments that costs are too prohibitive. Some estimates from the fire and rescue service show that the cost of attending a house fire where sprinklers have been active drops to less than £1,500 – whereas the usual cost would exceed £3,500. She called for case studies and research on the costs of sprinklers in terms of installation, maintenance and water supply, as well as environmental savings, to be shared as widely as possible to help build a more detailed case for sprinklers.
Picture in England
Completing the three viewpoints of progress across the UK, the deputy chief of Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service, Chris Enness, discussed the mixed picture in England. He spoke of the plentiful activity and lobbying work by the sprinkler community in the country, including the Business Sprinkler Alliance Group and the Sprinkler Coordinating Group, describing their efforts as a ‘coordinated battering of the doors of the policymakers’.
At the same time, Mr Enness said that England was ‘far behind’ other countries in taking action on sprinklers and he expressed frustration with the Government. ‘Communities and Local Government (CLG) appears to be with us in word but not in deed, and groups involved in trying to progress sprinklers often tend to work around them,’ he said.
In particular, he said, CLG often selectively quotes from the influential BRE report, Effectiveness of sprinklers in residential premises, as a reason for inactivity. The findings of the BRE report, issued in 2006, are broadly welcomed, in that it demonstrates that residential sprinklers are reliable, effective and cost-beneficial. However, the study concluded that residential sprinklers would only be 70% effective in preventing death, 30% in preventing injury and 50% in preventing property damage – leading sprinkler organisations to question and challenge some of its findings and the data used in its cost-benefit analysis.
Mr Enness said that the Chief Fire Officers’ Association and the NFSN are currently undertaking ‘progressive research that is more complete and accurate’, in order to challenge parts of the BRE report.
Public policy
Moving on, he raised concerns that only between 43% and 72% of all new schools built in England feature sprinklers – arguing that this clearly goes against the guidance in BB 100: Design for fire safety in schools, and the policy proposed by Government. He also reinforced the environmental benefits of sprinklers, explaining that fire services use 15-times more water to control a fire where no sprinkler is in place to control it. ‘Statistics show that widespread use of sprinklers could save up to 96% of the 5.6bn litres of water used annually in the UK to fight large fires’. Where a sprinkler system is installed, there is less damage to the environment both in terms of the products of combustion liberated and the volume of contaminated water generated.
Finally, Mr Enness argued that, with an aging population that will stay longer in the workplace and longer in their homes, care in the community is likely to be an ongoing public policy position – and the need for residential sprinklers will grow. ‘The nation will not be able to afford to accommodate increasing numbers of elderly and physically less-able people in residential care or nursing homes, where the need for sprinklers has been recommended,’ he said. ‘Consequently, individual private dwellings will need to have enhanced levels of protection if we are going to prevent future increases in the number of fire-related casualties’.
Firefighter safety
The importance of sprinklers in protecting operational fire crews was put under the spotlight by Dave Sibert of the Fire Brigades Union. He cited the examples of the June 2007 sofa warehouse blaze in Charleston, USA, and the November 2007 fire at a packing plant and warehouse in Warwickshire, England – both were unsprinklered buildings where multiple firefighters died in attendance. ‘Sprinklers can save lives, particularly in these kinds of large, single-storey buildings, although they are not the sole panacea – effective emergency exits, operational incident management, premises risk assessment, inspection and enforcement, for example, are also essential in ensuring fire safety,’ he said.
Under Approved Document B to the Building Regulations in England and Wales, single-storey high-bay warehouses have to be sprinkler protected if they are more than 18m in height or 20,000m2 in area. These limits are imposed in response to the risk faced by the normal occupants of the building but, said Mr Sibert, firefighters are still expected to deal with fires in these buildings. And this is ignoring the existing building stock, where warehouses built to previous standards can be of unlimited size without sprinklers.
In years gone by, firefighters from the local area would probably know the building reasonably well. For example, they would have visited it to gather operational risk information every year, and an officer would have inspected it to ensure compliance with the fire certificate. In addition, if the building did catch fire and the fire became embedded, high-rise appliances could be used as water towers to slow down fire spread and protect surrounding buildings.
However, argued Mr Sibert, following the modernisation of the fire service and introduction of a new fire safety legislative regime over the last decade, the service today is not geared towards intervention at large commercial buildings – the focus instead is more towards fire prevention in the home. Once a fire reaches a critical size, firefighters now are much more likely to withdraw and adopt defensive tactics than to remain inside a building and attack a fire at its seat.
To support his view, he pointed out that:
• between 1997 and 2007, the number of wholetime firefighters (who would have gathered operational risk information) has fallen by 5%
• community fire safety now takes up much more of firefighters’ time because, on average, it contributes to greater public safety
• technical fire safety departments have been particularly hard hit by reductions in fire service staffing and changes in priorities
• government statistics show that only 5% of factories and warehouses (those that present the highest risk) had their fire risk assessments audited in 2007/08
• the average response times for fire appliances has increased by about 18% in the last 10 years, meaning that by the time firefighters do arrive at incidents, the fires are that much larger
• since 1998, 1-in-6 aerial appliances has been taken out of service, and many of those left have had their crewing arrangements downgraded
Low-rise flats
Mr Sibert also touched on the arguments for fitting sprinklers in low-rise residential flats (those less than 30m in height) that feature lightweight construction. ‘Normal practice – the "stay put" approach – has been that if a fire starts in a flat, there is no need to evacuate the whole block as soon as the fire is discovered. Passive fire protection like compartment walls and floors between flats has always meant that the fire service has had time to extinguish a flat fire before it endangers the occupants of other flats,’ he explained. ‘However, the trend today is towards the use of timber and engineered floor joists in the construction of these buildings. Expanded polystyrene is even making a comeback as a form of insulation.’
He reported that the Practitioner’s Forum, looking into timber-frame buildings and the fire performance of structural insulated panels, has concluded that the stay put approach could be unsafe in modern low-rise residential flats incorporating these methods of construction. Questioning whether simultaneous evacuation of low-rise residential flats is a practicable solution, Mr Sibert argued that residential sprinklers could play a major role here.
European dimension
Offering a wider, European perspective was Alan Brinson, executive director of the European Fire Sprinkler Network. He discussed the use of sprinklers across Europe, the differing installation rules in place, and the growing recognition of sprinklers in national building codes. For example:
• in Finland, the Government is committed to using sprinklers as part of the solution to reduce fire deaths in dwellings by 70% – a likely proposal will be to require retrofit in high-risk social housing and possibly in all new social housing
• in the Netherlands, a matrix of permitted trade-offs for sprinklers and a design code of practice have been published, and several new housing developments may be fitted with sprinklers to save the cost of new fire stations
• in Norway, 30% of all new homes are sprinklered, and there is a legislative proposal to require sprinklers in all new houses and blocks of flats of more than two storeys
• in Sweden, sprinklers are widely used, especially in wooden housing, and the Government is to require sprinklers in new-build care homes
Mr Brinson also promoted the 8th International Fire Sprinkler Conference, taking place in Brussels later this month. This bi-annual event will present the latest in sprinkler technology, sprinkler design standards, and regulatory requirements or incentives to fit sprinklers – see www.eurosprinkler.org
US campaign
Over the years, North America has made the most effective progress to increase sprinkler installation, particularly with residential systems, and the latest efforts and successes in the USA were explored by Jim Shannon, president and chief executive of the National Fire Protection Association.
Although lower than a generation ago, America continues to have much higher fatality rates from dwelling fires than most other developed countries. In 2009, there were 3,300 deaths in dwellings, 80% of which were in one- and two-family homes.
As Mr Shannon explained: ‘Experience has taught us that consumers will not willingly pay more money for safety. The same family that will pay thousands of dollars for upgrades in their kitchen is unlikely to spend a few thousand dollars for a life-saving sprinkler system, even though all of the data indicates that it virtually eliminates the threat of dying in a fire at home. People will not act so the law must be changed to require it.’
The Bringing Safety Home advocacy campaign for home fire sprinklers has shown that, by adopting a strategy and, in a federated country working state by state, solid progress can be made. ‘The sprinkler campaign has been modelled on that for fire-safe cigarettes, to try and replicate the success,’ said Mr Shannon. The initiative includes tools and field resources to help advocates talk with local elected officials and others to promote the life-saving impact of sprinklers.