By Martha Quillin
The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
Copyright 2007 The News and Observer
WASHINGTON, N.C. — State Insurance Commissioner Jim Long says he will fight a change made Tuesday to the state building code because it increases the chance of a catastrophic fire.
Long, who is also the state fire marshal, had pleaded with members of the N.C. Building Code Council not to relax a new standard that requires sprinklers in new buildings where at least 100 people gather to eat or drink. The council gave Long the courtesy of letting him speak, then defied him by voting 8-4 to soften the rule.
North Carolina and many other states adopted a stricter standard on sprinklers after a 2003 fire at a Rhode Island nightclub killed 100 people. The old rule required sprinklers in restaurants, bars, clubs and cafeterias that could accommodate at least 300 people. Starting Jan. 1, the threshold was lowered to 100 people.
Tuesday, at the request of a state trade group for architects, the council raised it back to 300 for everything but nightclubs, which it didn’t define. The council’s 17 members are appointed by the governor and have the power to amend state building codes or adopt new ones.
Long could appeal the change directly to the building code council or in Wake County Superior Court. He could also approach the legislature and ask for a sprinkler law. He couldn’t say Tuesday what his next step would be.
“It’s not over yet,” he said.
The state chapter of the American Institute of Architects said the lower threshold would add unreasonable costs for independent business owners and school districts in rural areas with no access to city water supplies. Those owners would have to install water tanks and pumps to meet the sprinkler requirement, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Building codes specify ways other than sprinklers that buildings can be made more fire-safe, including the placement of doors and windows and use of slower-burning materials.
John L. Hitch, an architect with The Smith Sinnett Associates of Raleigh and a member of the building code council, said school administrators have told him that if they couldn’t afford to install the sprinklers, they could never allow more than 100 students into their cafeterias at a time.
“They would just about have to start serving lunch on the bus on the way to school,” Hitch told the council and the audience, which included at least two dozen uniformed fire marshals and firefighters from across the state.
The state Department of Insurance says about half the insurers in North Carolina give some type of price break for buildings that have sprinklers. Repair costs are also lower, the department says, and down time is shorter, because repairs can be made quicker for damage caused by water than by smoke and flame.
“You’re either about safety, or you’re about money,” said council member Alan W. Perdue, an Elizabeth City home builder who voted against the change.
The state Fire Marshals Association wanted to keep the stricter standard in place because it says sprinklers give people more time to get out of a burning building and reduce the need for firefighters to go in.
Jonathan Leonard, a deputy fire marshal for Charlotte, said enforcing the new standard would be difficult because there is no definition of “nightclub” in the building code.
In downtown Charlotte, Leonard said, dozens of businesses that are restaurants by day morph into nightclubs by night.
“They literally push the tables out of the way at 9 o’clock,” Leonard said, noting it’s not clear which standard would apply.
The exception for nightclubs is acknowledgement that people who have been drinking and are crowded together in a dark, noisy place may not be able to find an exit during a fast-moving fire, council members have said.
But Long suggested it was reckless to allow schoolchildren or restaurant patrons to face the risk.
“Without code protection, it will be about business — the funeral business,” Long told the council.