Sprinkler systems too slow to save lives

By BRIDGET CARTER

The Fire Service is changing the way it promotes fire safety after a study revealed that sprinkler systems fail when it comes to saving lives.

The study found that sprinklers fail where computers, televisions or anything plastic catch fire because plastic does not produce enough heat to immediately trigger them.

By the time the sprinkler system swings into action the house is filled with poisonous fumes.

Most at risk, says the Fire Service, are the thousands of people living in high-rise apartment buildings.

Its fire safety director, Jim Dance, said the service had been encouraging people to install sprinkler systems, which cost about $2500 for a three-bedroom home, but would now urge developers and residents to install a sprinkler system and a smoke detector.

"[This] work has put a new light on it and we have changed our thoughts," he said.

The findings come from a research project by Jonathan Shelley and Adam Bittern, both masters of engineering students at Canterbury University, who also work for the Fire Service in Auckland.

They did the research over a year for their masters by starting about six television fires in abandoned houses with sprinklers inside.

Mr Shelley said the house filled with thick, black smoke before the sprinkler went off.

The sprinkler was not activating early enough to provide adequate life safety. "In some circumstances you can't rely on them. You need something else as well."

Mr Shelley said one of the biggest concerns with the findings was with small, single-means-of-escape apartments because residents would normally have to make their way through the toxic fumes to safety.

Many had kitchens in the living area. In such a small amount of space, residents might get sick of the false alarms from their smoke detectors.

"The residents end up tampering with them to get some peace. They put covers over them or remove them from the ceiling or whatever," he said.

There are 11,000 apartment units in Auckland alone. Most are occupied by two people.

Mr Dance said there were some with sprinkler systems and no smoke detectors.

But one of Auckland's most active apartment developers, Redwood Group chief Tony Gapes, said all his high-rise apartments had sprinklers and smoke detectors.

Auckland City Council required that rigorous fire safety devices be installed in high-rise apartment blocks, he said.

Mr Shelley said sprinklers for homes were new technology and the research came after new rules for home sprinklers were introduced almost a year ago.

One of the things that could prevent frustrating smoke detector false alarms would be mute buttons or improved building ventilation.

A technical adviser for the Building Industry Authority, Alan Moule, said apartment blocks had different types of fire prevention.

The Building Code had certain requirements and the correct sprinkler head needed to be selected for the correct situation. "The difficulty comes when people take away one of the numbers of protection."

The authority said any research would be taken on board.

Auckland City Council planner John Duthie said most apartment blocks had highly sophisticated levels of fire prevention, and that smoke detectors in most cases could not be deactivated.

Brady Williams, who lived in a new apartment building in Day St, said he knew of cases where people had deactivated the smoke detector in their apartment bedrooms, but that showed up on a computerised system and someone came and got that person to reactive the device.

He believed that by the time a sprinkler worked in a building, most of the property was already damaged by smoke anyway.

The findings

* Fast-response residential sprinklers and smoke alarms are important in multi-storey apartments.

* Experiments have shown that sprinklers alone won't react in time to save people if the fire involves plastics.

* Traditional smoke alarms are prone to false alarms due to normal living conditions, such as steam from showers or cooking fumes.

* Some sort of early warning system is important in multi-storey apartments of the type becoming more common in Auckland and Wellington.