New Impact Tool Presents Facts on the Real Cost of Fire in Homes without Installed Fire Sprinklers

You know one- and two-family homes present the greatest fire risk to residents and responding firefighters. But do local officials in your community know? Lack of understanding contributes to the fire problem, putting the community at risk.

Home fires can become deadly in as little as two minutes because of modern construction methods, synthetic materials and furnishings and emerging technology, such as the increasing use of lithium-ion batteries. Home fire sprinklers are the only technology that can automatically stop a fire from becoming deadly. Every new-home development built without fire sprinkler protection jeopardizes community safety.

For years, national NFPA and ICC codes have required sprinklers in all new one- and two-family homes. Unfortunately, this life-saving sprinkler requirement is being removed from local codes across the country. Powerful lobbying efforts and misinformation from the homebuilding industry, coupled with claims that installing sprinklers is too costly, are driving this anti-code strategy.

One reason their negative campaign is so effective is that local decision makers don’t push back against the misinformation because they don’t understand the bigger, longer-term picture affecting their constituents: the cost of not protecting new homes.

Unsprinklered New Homes are Substandard Homes

This is where the fire service plays a critical role. Authorities Having Jurisdiction (AHJs) and fire service leaders should be advising local decision makers that removing sprinklers from the codes encourages the construction of substandard, less safe homes. When fire strikes these unsprinklered new homes, the consequences can be severe. If your decision makers don’t push back, they become part of the fire problem. Every new home built without fire sprinklers threatens Community Risk Reduction (CRR) efforts for decades.

The real cost of a fire in a home without fire sprinklers far outweighs the cost of installing them: death, injury, displacement and property damage. Additionally, there are significant community impacts on firefighter health and safety and fire department resources.

Effective Action: Visualizing the Local Impact of Home Fire

Here’s effective action you can take today. With a FEMA Fire Prevention & Safety grant, HFSC developed the free, online Community Impact Tool. This tool enables AHJs and fire officials to calculate and display the true financial cost associated with any fire within their jurisdiction. The cost calculation is tailored to the unique circumstances of each fire incident. Users can input local data including fatalities, injuries, property loss and displacement. Fire department resource expenditures can also be factored in.

The tool includes 28 slides. Users can select which slides to use and choose to compare the costs between local homes protected with fire sprinklers and those without or use national averages where local sprinklered homes do not exist. Once the information is entered, the tool generates a professional slide presentation that can be presented in person or sent directly to decision makers.

View more details about the Community Impact Tool >

Additional Resources to Help Educate Your Decision Makers

At code update and adoption time, a common false assertion is that sprinklers will make new housing unaffordable. However, fire departments across the country demonstrate the opposite. When fire sprinklers are installed in entire developments, trade-ups authorized by AHJs reduce costs and increase developer profits. Examples of such developer incentives include allowing higher density with more homes being built, increased hydrant spacing, street-width reduction, waived fees and more.

In addition to the new Community Impact Tool, HFSC provides user-friendly resources to help AHJs inform local officials and other stakeholders about developer incentives. Online case studies document communities that have passed codes requiring fire sprinklers in all new construction, as well as those offering incentives to encourage sprinkler installation used in new developments. These studies detail the incentives used and final costs to install fire sprinklers.