Sprinkler Recall Sounds Alarm
Some Safety Officials Fear Buildings Depend Too Heavily on Systems

By Caroline E. Mayer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 29, 2001; Page H01

For the past 30 years, sprinklers have come to be regarded as the best defense in case of a fire -- the next best thing to hiring a private fire department to provide on-site, round-the-clock protection. Sprinklers are now commonly found in new office buildings, hospitals, hotels and apartment complexes.

But the recent recall of 35 million potentially faulty sprinkler heads by the manufacturer adds a new element to a smoldering debate in the fire protection industry: A small but growing number of safety officials are concerned there might be an overreliance on sprinklers.

Convinced of the value of sprinklers, building-code officials and fire-safety inspectors have been relaxing age-old requirements that call for "passive" fire protection measures -- such as specially constructed fire-resistant doors, walls and ceilings -- in buildings with sprinklers. At the same time, they are permitting taller and wider buildings, with more open, flexible space.

A new national code, which has already been adopted by 10 states, reinforces that thinking by allowing buildings with sprinklers to have more stories, more open space, narrower stairwells and fewer exits. They also can have fewer fire doors, fire dampers and fire walls, and less-extensive fire protection in roofing.

"I'm very pro-sprinkler, but when you're talking about fire safety, you can't have just one line of protection," said Don Bliss, New Hampshire state fire marshal. "If we're depending on a sprinkler system to function and it fails, people will be at considerably more risk."

Frank Teevan, a Fairfax County fire inspector, said, "We've been trained to think of the sprinkler system as the end-all and be-all. Now we learn the life-safety device may not be as reliable as we thought."

Many builders and fire officials said they still have a high confidence in sprinklers.

"Sprinklers have an outstanding track record," said Larry Perry, code consultant for the Building Owners and Managers Association. Even with the recent recall, there is no evidence "to say we can't put faith in sprinkler systems," he said.

Why not have sprinklers and keep the more traditional, passive fire-protection controls -- just as cars now have seat belts and air bags?

"The point of the trade-off would be moot if you design a system assuming the sprinkler will fail," said Michael Pfeiffer, vice president of codes and standards for Building Officials and Code Administrators International Inc. (BOCA), whose code is used by localities in the Northeast. "Clearly, there's an expectation that the sprinkler will do its job."

That's the case in Maryland, one of the states that has adopted the new national code. The trade-offs are "not a concern; we believe that sprinklers are an acceptable alternative to other requirements in the code," said John Bender, chief fire protection engineer with the state fire marshal's office.

There's no question that sprinklers save lives and property. The National Fire Protection Association said that when they are present, they cut the risk of death and property damage by at least half and often by two-thirds.

FM Global, one of the world's largest commercial and industrial property insurance and risk management organizations, said that over the past five years, it has found that the average cost of damage of a fire in a building with a sprinkler system is less than $400,000, while the loss incurred in a building without a system averaged $2.2 million.

However, when a sprinkler doesn't work, whether because of human error, improper maintenance or some other reason, the damage can be surprising -- and devastating.

For instance, when a fire destroyed a storage facility at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., earlier this month, vital research equipment was lost, including a new Doppler radar system for collecting data on tornadoes, thunderstorms and hurricanes. Damage was estimated at $1.8 million.

The sole fire-control system was a sprinkler system. Unbeknown to fire officials and building managers, it had been disconnected four years before, when the lab cut part of the piping system to make room for taller equipment. The sprinkler system hadn't been checked annually, as it should have been.

"A sprinkler system would have made a difference," said Kevin Leach, a fire investigator in Norman's fire department. "You still would have had a fire, but the damage would have been much more limited."

Other times, failure occurs because of inadequate water supply or water pressure.

Faulty heads were blamed in the sprinkler failure in a Santa Barbara, Calif., residence 18 months ago; the two-story house sustained $200,000 in damage. The failure was one of 13 reports that led to the July 19 recall by Central Sprinkler Co.

Meanwhile, it was clogged pipes -- caused by corrosion from bacteria in the water supply -- that was cited as the reason for the sprinkler failure in February 2000 in a nursing home outside Philadelphia. An 80-year-old woman died, and her sister was injured after the sprinkler closest to the fire failed. The system's pipes were so clogged that the full force of water couldn't reach the sprinkler heads.

Sprinklers were invented in 1874 by an American manufacturer to protect his piano factory. Until the 1950s they were installed primarily in warehouses and factories. Today they can be found in virtually every new commercial and apartment construction, and most old buildings that have been renovated. There are relatively few sprinklers in private homes, although their use is growing there as well.

Sales of sprinklers now total 40 million a year -- twice the number sold 10 years ago, according to the National Fire Sprinkler Association. The industry trade group estimates that there are 700 million to 900 million sprinklers installed in the United States and Canada.

That number is certain to grow as the use of sprinklers is further encouraged by building code changes. As code consultant Perry explained, under the code, "a typical office building that does not have sprinklers will have to have fire-rated corridors, with walls that have been tested to withstand fire for an hour and offices with doors that close automatically any time anyone goes in or out." Perry added that these measures aren't always effective; fire doors can be propped open and fire walls can be drilled through to lay cable and wiring.

Under the new code, however, if a building has sprinklers, "there's no requirement for a fire-rated corridor. You can have an open plan or offices with doors that can be propped open," he said. New sprinkler systems also have electronic monitors to let people know that the system is working. Such a system would have helped alert the National Severe Storms Lab that its sprinklers had been shut off.

But industry officials said the monitors would not detect whether the sprinkler heads are faulty, or if the pipes are so clogged with corrosion that water could not get through.

As a result, some fire experts wonder if too many passive controls have been given up. They say that individually each trade-off might be reasonable, but added together they could pose risk.

"We aren't including redundancy, which has been the cornerstone of fire safety over the decades," said John Klote, a McLean fire- and smoke-control consultant. "Everyone agrees that sprinklers are extremely good, but they are not perfect. If you have removed most of your other life-safety devices and then you have a deficiency in your sprinkler or the fire overpowers your sprinklers, you can have real problems."

Michael A. O'Hara, president of Mountain Star Group, a Minnesota consulting firm that advises architects and engineers on fire safety and building code issues, said the move away from multiple fire-protection systems has escalated in recent years.

"When you go into existing buildings built so long ago they can't be brought up to modern-day safety codes, fire authorities will say, 'If you sprinkle, we'll look past those other sins,' " he said. "In new construction, the leniency is even greater."

O'Hara said he is worried that by depending so much on sprinklers "we can lull ourselves into a serious situation, especially if the sprinkler systems are poorly maintained."

"You can't put them in and forget about them," he said. "They are just like raising children -- they need attention."

Sprinkler manufacturers said the increasing trade-offs reflect the simple fact that sprinklers work well.

"People have confidence in them," said John Viniello, president of the National Fire Sprinkler Association. "We have not gotten any field reports of deaths or injuries because sprinklers have failed to operate in fire conditions, and we would have heard about it. The product is still performing."

In fact, Viniello added, "each time you hear about people killed and injured in a fire is when you don't have sprinklers. Three firemen were recently killed in New York, trying to fight fires in an unsprinklered building." Similarly, he said, sprinklers would have quickly extinguished the January 2000 fire at Seton Hall University in New Jersey that killed three and injured 58.

Industry estimates show that sprinklers have a 95 percent to 99 percent success rate.

That rate doesn't include incidents where sprinklers are found to be faulty before a fire occurs. Underwriters Laboratories Inc., the nation's largest independent testing and certification organization, found that of the Central Sprinkler models recently recalled, 26 percent of the heads it tested failed to activate at the water pressure levels required to receive UL approval. Another 8.4 million Central sprinklers were recalled in 1998 after UL's tests found a 31 percent failure rate.

The problem common to both recalled sprinklers: corrosion of the O-rings, used to seal the heads from leaks. On Friday, UL announced it would no longer approve O-rings in sprinklers after 2002. Many manufacturers have already stopping making such models, but there are millions still in place. UL and the Consumer Product Safety Commission are both reviewing other models using O-rings and have said they will take action if they find problems.

UL also has announced it is revising some of its testing procedures, addressing concerns by fire officials that some of its lab tests need to reflect what happens to sprinkler heads once they are installed.

Meanwhile, there is a growing number of reports of corrosion in sprinkler pipes, caused by bacteria in the water supply.

The sprinkler trade group believes the corrosion and other reported failures are simply isolated incidents, due largely to the tremendous growth of the number of installed sprinklers and to newer sprinkler technology.

Even with the sprinklers recalled, "the vast majority work," said the industry Association's Viniello.

Even so, at the urging at the CPSC, the National Fire Sprinkler Association and its members have agreed to hire an independent research firm to examine how well sprinklers perform after they are installed.

"We want to know what happens to sprinklers once they leave the manufacturing facility -- if there are unique environmental conditions, such as 'aggressive' water supplies where certain minerals could affect sprinklers," Viniello said.

Preliminary findings are due next month and could eventually lead to new manufacturing standards or more frequent testing requirements after sprinklers are in place.

The study doesn't mean "the sky is falling," Viniello said. "It's more like a healthy person who's had a tremendous health record going in for preventive medicine."