Fire Prevention An Aid to Suppression, Not Expression
departments
EDITOR’S OPINION
Make no mistake about it, we are still losing people. We are temporarily lulled into complacency because of a downward trend in national fire death statistics and in fire incidents themselves.
The reduced casualty figures can be accounted for by the increased use of alarm devices, public awareness, increased fire protection proficiency, and even statistical manipulation. The reduced fire incident record can be accounted for by all of the above reasons as well as by the increased use of non-combustible materials and the fact that those most injured in the “Burn, baby, burn!” days are now young adults who will never use fire as a major social protest.
However, the fact remains that we are still losing people in preventable situations. Eighty percent of all fire deaths occur in residential buildings, and, in most cases, before our apparatus arrives. Don’t you think that our fire prevention efforts could help to shatter this 80% figure?
What is the answer?
The successful fire suppression and life safety track record of automatic sprinkler systems makes this technology an overwhelming solution.
The public, whose supportive weight will make our recommendations a reality, is held in check by confusion arising from debate among the experts—the fire safety personnel.
There are just as many of these experts on one side of the sprinkler issues as there are on the other. A recent paradox occurred in a New Jersey courtroom. One investigator testified that the absence of an automatic sprinkler system within a highly combustible amusement occupancy had been a major factor in a multiple life loss. Other experts contradicted this finding, testifying that a sprinkler system in such an occupancy would not have acted quickly enough.
Yet, the fact remains that there was no automatic suppression system installed and there was a multiple life loss.
Let’s get it together. We know that functioning, automatic, wet sprinkler systems are the answer to the great fire death horror in our country. Let’s solve all our disagreements concerning activation speed, conduit material, etc., and, as was appropriately said by the secretary to the New York Board of Fire Underwriters, Ed Whalen, “Let’s put the fire out!”
