Spreading the word about sprinklers

Read below for Chief Billy Goldfeder’s thoughts on the challenges departments face in promoting adoption of residential sprinklers.

Fire departments have long found educating people about the importance of residential sprinklers to be a tough task.

For starters, myths run rampant; “they’re too expensive” or “they’ll all go off at once” are just two of the most commonly found misconceptions held by householders.

Couple these with constraints on your department’s budget and the difficulty freeing up time to actively engage your community, and it can seem like an uphill struggle to get the right message across.

Fortunately, it’s now gotten a little bit easier thanks to a new toolkit from the Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition (HFSC).

For the past 10 years, the HFSC has been working tirelessly on public awareness initiatives about the lifesaving value of home fire sprinkler protection.

The results of the group’s efforts have now been packaged in a multimedia public education kit, aimed at arming fire departments with the resources and facts needed to perform effective outreach programs.

Best of all, the kit is completely free to fire departments thanks to a Department of Homeland Security Fire Act Grant, which has also helped to fund a new animated children’s website, SprinklerSmarts.org.

Audio-visual tools
The education kit features a CD-ROM containing customizable presentations, public relations tools and programs. In addition, a DVD comes packed with audio-visual tools to enliven presentations, and videos that are geared toward educating consumers and builders/developers.

“This kit pretty much gives an educator — whether they are brand new or they have been doing community outreach for years — everything they need to get a sprinkler education program started,” HFSC spokeswoman Julie Reynolds said.

Since last month’s launch, the organization has already had 5,000 requests for copies of the kit, which comes in a concise A4-sized folder.

“The way it’s designed makes it really simple for educators to carry around in a briefcase and incorporate the components into their own material, whether it’s a PowerPoint presentation or a speech,” Reynolds said.

The package, according to Reynolds, will help departments overcome the two-fold challenges in sprinkler outreach programs of public misconceptions and funding/time constraints.

“A lot of the myths can be prompted by movies,” she said. “Every year, there seems to be another movie that shows some type of massive sprinkler activation that isn’t accurate, but is quite dramatic.

“People unfortunately remember this as the truth, so much so that the fire service has to overcome those types of myths.”

The facts, according to the HFSC, are simple.

They include:

• Eight of out 10 fire deaths occur in the home
  
• Fire sprinklers save lives, reduce property loss and can even help cut homeowner insurance premiums
  
• Home fire sprinklers can contain and may even extinguish a fire in less time than it would take the fire department to arrive on the scene
  
• Installing both smoke alarms and a fire sprinkler system reduces the risk of home fire death by 82 percent, relative to having neither
  
• Only the sprinkler closest to the fire will activate, spraying water directly on the fire. Ninety percent of fires are contained by the operation of just one sprinkler
  
• Nationally, on average, home fire sprinkler systems add 1 percent to 1.5 percent of the total building cost in new construction
  
• Home fire sprinklers use only a small fraction of the water used by fire department hoses
  
• Modern residential sprinklers are inconspicuous and can be mounted flush with walls or ceilings.

Reynolds, who has extensive experience in the fire industry, including being the NFPA’s director of public affairs, said she is also acutely aware of the other difficulties most fire departments face.

“Fire departments are juggling an awful lot of responsibilities and a lot of messages to convey, and often do this with very limited budgets,” she said.

“We are trying hard — and with the help of this federal grant — to provide them with the tools they need to provide timely and accurate information about residential fire sprinklers.”

Within the kit, the CD-ROM has a variety of educational tools designed to meet the different needs of communities, from children to older people.

It includes a five-step community education planning guide, an overview of home fire sprinkler standard NFPA 13D, presentation material, quizzes for pre-schoolers through adults and news releases that can be customized for your department.

Media help
In addition, there are tips for utilizing the local media to promote sprinklers (see sidebar).
Just this week, there was a perfect example in South Carolina of how to use the media to highlight the importance of sprinkler systems.

In the wake of three apartment fires this year in Raleigh, the city’s fire marshal’s description of how sprinklers would have made a difference in all three blazes secured a page lead in the local newspaper.

“Fire departments have a tremendous amount of credibility and respect from the locals,” Reynolds said. “They are where people go to when they have questions about fire safety at home.”

The fire service has been vital in helping the HFSC deliver the sprinkler message ever since it was launched in 1996, Reynolds said.

It was formed by three groups — the American Fire Sprinkler Association, the National Fire Sprinkler Association and the NFPA — when it became apparent that while they were all doing sprinkler outreach programs, no one was devoting 100 percent of their time to it.

“From the very beginning, the fire service has been our partner,” Reynolds said.

“They are the first line of communication about fire safety in every community.”

• For a free copy of the public education kit, go to Homefiresprinkler.org.