Letter: Delaware Fire Sprinkler Coalition fights for change
For 2018, 11 people died in fires. Ten fatalities were in either rowhouses, townhouses or single-family detached homes. One fatality took place in an outbuilding at a private residence. Ages ranged from an infant to adults over 65. In fact, the person most likely to be a fire fatality in Delaware is a white male over 65 years old.
The Delaware Office of the State Fire Marshal reported through Delaware Fire Prevention Commission reports that there were at least five sprinkler saves throughout the state in 2018.
• Amazon distribution facility in Middletown in March.
• The Polo/Ralph Lauren outlet store in Rehoboth in March.
• Property in Claymont in April - the interior sprinkler system activated to protect the building from an outside fire.
• The Big Fish Grill in Millville in June
• A commercial occupancy in Talleyville in June.
There is no slowdown in the conversion of land with agricultural or low-density zoning to residential zoning. Just watch the announcements from each county’s zoning and planning board. Now is the time for each municipality in Delaware that adopts its own building code to rescind the deletion of the sprinkler requirement for new townhomes and single-family detached homes. New voting members of legislative bodies have been sworn in. New leadership in all the state and county emergency services associations are in place.
We must insist on the code updates to save our own firefighters as well as our neighbors in our communities. Unfortunately, the only numbers not going up are the numbers of new members of volunteer fire companies throughout Delaware. Fewer firefighters to respond to more calls in fast-growing communities. And this is not just a Delaware problem.
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania plunging volunteer firefighter numbers have also been reported recently. Contact your town council members, your county council members, your state representatives and your senators. If you do not want to talk to them, send me their contact information.
I will do all I can to contact them. If we do not push for sprinkler code updates, then we are allowing our friends, neighbors and fire service colleagues to be threatened by fire every day. Sprinklers work to save lives, property, groundwater tables and the air environment.
Paul Eichler
president, Delaware Fire Sprinkler Coalition
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