THE GROUP FOR SOLICITORS
WITH DISABILITIES

The Case for Fire Sprinklers

Most of us assume that the fire safety measures in modern buildings make them as safe for disabled people as for the able-bodied. But is this the case? Through a chance meeting with Alan Brinson, Executive Director of the European Fire Sprinkler Network, I learned some disturbing facts about Approved Document B, Fire Safety. This is the statutory guidance issued by the Secretary of State for the Department for Communities and Local Government “for the purpose of providing practical guidance with respect to the requirements of Schedule 1 to and Regulation 7 of the Building Regulations 2000 (SI 2000/2531) for England and Wales.”

The Building Regulations consider five areas of fire safety:


Conceptually, these measures are designed to slow the development of a fire to allow those inside a building to escape before conditions become life-threatening. It is questionable whether this is an adequate strategy for disabled people, who need more time to evacuate a building. AD B recognises this and advises that, “For them evacuation involving the use of refuges on escape routes and either assistance down (or up) stairways or the use of suitable lifts will be necessary.” Refuges are defined as “relatively safe waiting areas for short periods. They are not areas where disabled people should be left alone until rescued by the fire and rescue service, or until the fire is extinguished.” So how long is it safe for disabled people to stay in a refuge and who will get us out? It would be terrifying to be left in a refuge while everyone else leaves a building which is on fire. The refuge concept is pure tokenism.

There is a far better way to make buildings safe for disabled people and that is to fit them with fire sprinkler systems. Since 1990 and 1986 Vancouver and Scottsdale respectively have fitted sprinklers in all new housing. Neither has recorded a fire death in a sprinklered building. Moreover, through retrofitting sprinklers in high-risk buildings Vancouver reduced its annual fire deaths from a peak of 40 in 1973 to zero in 1998.

All of us have seen fire sprinklers in films but few of us know how they really work. Each sprinkler has a water seal held in place by a glass bulb filled with a liquid. As the liquid is heated by a fire it expands and at a set temperature, usually 68°C, the glass bulb breaks and the sprinkler sprays water over the fire below. Sprinklers operate while the fire is small, so that little heat and smoke are generated. In a three-year study for the Government  researchers found that in a domestic setting, sprinklers maintained a tenable environment within the room where the fire began for most fire scenarios. In all cases they maintained a tenable environment in other parts of the house, even if the door from the room where the fire started was left open.

Many people believe that sprinklers will regularly go off by accident but unlike in films, only those sprinklers close to the fire will operate and they only react to heat, not to smoke from burnt toast or cigarettes. Another common misconception is that all the sprinklers in the building operate together to cause more water damage than fire damage. In fact two-thirds of fires are dealt with by one or two sprinklers and they release far less water than a single fire service hose.

In the UK we have been slow to recognise the benefits of fire sprinklers but this is changing, with the enthusiastic and committed support of the fire services. My own introduction to sprinklers came from officers of Cambridgeshire Fire & Rescue Service, who in 2003 persuaded me to see sprinklers installed in two care homes being built by the Varrier-Jones Foundation, of which I am the CEO.

Residents of care homes are clearly more vulnerable to fire than the general population. From Alan I learned that following a fire in Glasgow in January 2004, which killed fourteen residents of the Rosepark home for the elderly, Scotland introduced a requirement that sprinklers be fitted in all new care buildings. The fire safety community expected that England & Wales would follow suit when in a 2005 draft review of AD B the Government said it was “minded to introduce a provision for sprinklers in all residential care homes.” This proposal was supported by many fire safety groups and the same Government-sponsored research had even found a strong economic case for it, so there was surprise and disappointment when the final version of AD B, published just before Christmas 2006, omitted this new measure. At the same time a second, previously unannounced Government-sponsored report on the economic benefits of fitting sprinklers in care homes was published . In contradiction to the earlier report, it found the economics were against fitting sprinklers in care homes, claiming that most fires started in clothing or bedding and killed people before the sprinklers operated. The report did not include evidence to substantiate this claim and there is no reason to suppose that fires develop differently in the UK than in the United States, where public data shows that fire deaths are reduced by a factor of 6 in care homes protected with sprinklers.

Current measures to make buildings safe from fire for disabled people treat us as second class citizens, exposing us to more risk than able-bodied people. Sprinkler systems are a proven measure to redress this situation, at reasonable cost. Unfortunately, even a modest proposal to use them to protect one of the most vulnerable groups in our society has been rejected by Government. I am asking the GSD to lend its support to calls for sprinklers to be fitted in new care homes in England and Wales as in Scotland, and for the concept of fire safety “refuges” to be rejected and replaced by sprinklers, to afford equal fire safety for any disabled people unable to evacuate a building as quickly as the able-bodied.

 

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