Fire service fight to install sprinklers in new homes

People are being urged to sign an online petition as part of a campaign that would see all newly-built homes fitted with a sprinkler system.

Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service is behind the push to urge the Government to bring in a similar law that, it says, would ‘save lives’.

A spokesman for the service said: “The Welsh assembly has recently voted through a law to make sprinklers compulsory in all new dwellings.

“This petition seeks to ensure that the same law is brought to the rest of the UK.

“No one has ever died as a result of a fire in a building with a working sprinkler system.

They are cost effective and save lives.”

Experts claim: The systems have had a better than 99 per cent success rate in controlling fires around the world.

Sprinklers virtually eliminate fire deaths, reduce injuries by at least 80 per cent, reduce property damage by 90 per cent and substantially reduce damage to the environment from fire.

Sprinklers not only warn of a fire, they also act immediately to control it — even if nobody is present.

More than 60 per cent of fire casualties are physically or mentally disadvantaged, which prevents or slows their escape from a fire. Sprinklers will, at the very least, control the fire and will raise the alarm, extending the time available for escape or rescue.

Fire service fight to install sprinklers in new homes Sprinklers are not expensive — normally costing around one or two per cent of the cost of construction of a new building.

Each sprinkler is individually triggered directly by the heat of a fire. Only the sprinkler(s) directly affected by the fire go off, not all of them.

Sprinklers have been successfully used for the protection of property such as factories, department stores and shopping centres for more than 130 years.

There is now a growing appreciation of their potential to save lives in domestic properties where the majority of deaths from fire occur.

To sign the petition visit, epetitions.

direct.gov.uk/petitions/4409

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