City wants sprinklers in new homes

Right now, the fire department has an accepted response time of nine minutes, 30 seconds, Rodgers said. “It just depends on where you are on some of the outer-reaching areas. The whole idea is our first arriving apparatus should be there within that nine minutes and 30 seconds.”

How quickly a fire burns after ignition depends on the materials the building and its contents are made of, Rodgers said.

“If it’s an older home versus a newer home, some of the building construction nowadays doesn’t burn quite as long before it fails as some of the older type of construction. The time frame is important to us, because it allows us to get inside those buildings to do our job and not have to worry about the floor falling through or the roof coming in or things like that.”

The sprinklers also help to give the people inside of a building more time to get out, Rodgers added.

In terms of the demonstration, the sprinkler system activated 58 seconds after the fire was ignited in that demonstration box.

Seeing how quickly the unit without a sprinkler system became engulfed was a scary sight for Tammy McKay. A City Hall employee, McKay is also a resident and a mother.

She said the demonstration makes her seriously think about putting sprinklers in her house.

“In the house that burned the most, I was really surprised that the gyprock, that it didn’t burn. I didn’t realize that it wouldn’t burn at all, like it hardly looks like it’s been touched,” she said.

The demonstration was a part of the second Official Community Plan meeting – the plan has been described as Prince Albert’s road map for the future. The plan calls for the installation of home sprinkler systems in all new builds.

Mayor Greg Dionne said that the City is looking to pass a bylaw requiring all new homes to be equipped with sprinklers.

“Well, when you see the display here, does this prove our point? One would have saved a life, the other one, people would have died.”

Dionne said this is also about relief for taxpayers. He said that if sprinklers aren’t installs inside homes that are outside of the response time area, then the City would spend $5 million or $6 million to build a new fire hall, putting new fire trucks in it and then manning it.

“And that cost to the taxpayer goes on and on,” he said, adding that the $4,000 to $5,000 it would cost to install sprinklers in a new home is a reasonable request for the City to make to developers and the real estate agencies.

As for a future new fire hall, it’s something the City is still looking at. But when it comes to the new homes to be built near the Alfred Jenkins Field House, Dionne said there are plans to pass a bylaw requiring those homes to have sprinklers.

The City has been looking into the possibility of building two new fire halls, but Dionne said requiring new homes in the West Hill to have sprinklers installed may solve that problem. In this case, the City would then only have to build one new hall, on the east side of the city, which Dionne said makes more sense than building two.

“That’s going to save us a fortune, because as I said, we don’t have to build. And then the response time, by the time they (the fire department) get up there with a truck, the fire’s going to be out.”

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames

by Thia James

City wants sprinklers in new homes

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