More sprinkler mandates needed

Not surprisingly, we detect more enthusiasm for financial carrots to spur the voluntary installation of sprinkler systems in a variety of buildings around the state than new legislative sticks mandating the installation of fire suppression systems. No question, tax credits will be a useful incentive in some instances. But 22 deaths in three separate fires in buildings ranging from a motel to a retail store to a private residence have directly impacted lives in this state and are tragic lessons that warrant the state insisting on the life-saving devices.

A team of experts — hired by the city of Charleston after the deadly Sofa Super Store blaze this summer that took the lives of nine city firemen — has urged city officials to go to the Legislature with a reasonable, life-saving package of proposals. Even before the tragic deaths of seven S.C. college students at a North Carolina beach house late last month, the experts recommended that sprinklers be required in all new residential and commercial structures as well as existing buildings with excessive fire risks. The beach house where the students died had working smoke alarms but no sprinkler system. The Greenville motel where six people died three years ago and the Charleston Sofa Super Store — both older buildings — lacked sprinkler systems. Currently, the state only requires some sort of fire suppression system, ranging from sprinklers to fire walls, in new commercial and multi-family structures.

The push to require sprinklers at least in lodging facilities began after the Greenville fire but faltered after legislators bought the argument that it would put those with older structures or historic bed and breakfast establishments out of business. Charleston Sen. Glenn McConnell, president pro tempore of the Senate, was among those who thought the earlier legislation went too far in terms of existing structures. But he told us after the Sofa Super Store fire that he has become convinced that sprinklers should be required in those existing buildings that pose a particular hazard or abnormal danger to firemen.

It didn't take the North Carolina beach house tragedy to convince the city of Charleston's chief building inspector and fire code official, Tom Scholtens, of the need to require sprinklers in all new residential structures. He reminded us after the Sofa Super Store fire that the vast majority of fire deaths occur in one- and two-family homes. Indeed, national figures show that 80 percent of the fire deaths last year were in residential structures. Mr. Scholtens points out that the cost of sprinklers is about the cost of carpeting a house, some $2.80 per square foot.

But The State newspaper recently quoted spokesmen for municipal, hospitality and home building groups as supporting tax incentives for sprinkler systems as opposed to mandating their installation. Even in instances where sprinklers are mandated, tax breaks should be made available.

While the city's outside fire experts endorsed tax incentives as a means of encouraging the installation of sprinklers in existing buildings that are not excessively risky, they also recognize that incentives alone are an inadequate response to residential fire hazards that could be easily and dramatically lessened at the time of construction.