Fire Critic An Unadulterated View of the Fire Service
42 children have died in a day care fire in Mexico and many others are hospitalized. Many are pointing to safety rules as being the reasons for the possibility for such tragedies as this to occur. Mexico is not a stranger to such fire related tragedies either:
Similar problems have been blamed for previous disaster in Mexico: In 2000, a fire killed 21 people at a glitzy Mexico City disco that only had one available exit, lacked smoke detectors and did not have enough fire extinguishers. Last year, 12 people died when police raiding a Mexico city nightclub blocked the overcrowded club’s lone working exit, creating a deadly stampede. The emergency exits had been blocked.
I thought at first I would reference this story to discuss firefighters worse calls. You know the ones that hit you in the gut and stay with you the rest of your career. However, I decided instead to speak about safety initiatives.
For many years, leaders in the fire service have been hounding Local, State, and Federal Politicians to create regulations for residential sprinklers. More importantly, firefighters are attempting to make residential sprinklers mandatory or at least offer incentives for utilization of residential sprinklers.
Fire Codes have required sprinklers in Commercial buildings and multi-family housing for some time. There are some localities which require residential sprinklers or offer incentives, but they are few and far between.
Firefighters usually don’t bother with asking for things that are unnecessary or not warranted. Over the course of fire history, firefighters have battled some very deadly fires. These fires were tragic but fortunately served as learning experiences for the U.S. These fires were used as case studies to create and/or improve life saving measures, building codes, fire codes, and other regulations. It is hard to correctly estimate how many lives have been saved by learning from mistakes.
Tragedies such as the one mentioned above happen a lot less often in the U.S. because of our regulations. This is a good thing. That is why firefighters are fighting harder than ever for residential sprinklers.
More firefighters and civilians die in residential fires than other fires.
View the links below to check out more about residential sprinklers:
Firefighters: Fire Sprinklers in Homes Needed
A Call to Join the Sprinkler Fight
If you would really like to see the power of residential sprinklers view the video below:
