This is the second time in my life that I have written a letter for news publication. In 1986 while working for the State Fire Marshal in Florida, I was compelled to write a letter about a tragic fire that occurred in the Panhandle area of Florida. In the local news a report of a family of four, a young father and mother and two young children, died as a result of a home fire. The fire occurred in the early morning hours, while the family was sleeping. The fire was determined to be accidentally caused. In my letter then and now, the comments about the fire, unfortunately, remain the same today.

The typical news report for fire victims is the family may be assisted by a local civic agency, if they survive. The assistance would be an outpouring of community concern for the family, and they may receive temporary living and food assistance until they could get back on their feet. However if the scenario was of an unknown intruder committing the crime of killing a family comprised of a young father and mother and their two infant children, the public response would be somewhat different. Local residents would have a sense of uneasiness and concern about their own family’s welfare and safety. They would, rightfully so, demand more police presence in their neighborhood. The citizen may establish a community crime watch in their neighborhood. My concern is why don’t we have the same sense of outrage and uneasiness when people are affected by fire?

This was my concern over twenty years ago and still is today. To a degree, I understand the differences between the two types of threats. However, the final results are the same. People die from both fire and crime needlessly. Yet the solution to protect the victims of fire, in my opinion, requires much less effort than for protecting victims of crime. We could provide continuous protection of victims of crime with a policeman or other type of skilled security personnel twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, however this is not a reasonable or even practical solution to the crime problem. However, to provide this type of twenty-four hour, seven days a week protection for the victims of fire is much more realistic. Today, as was the case over 25 years ago, there are easy and cost-effective ways to protect our loved ones from fire. In fact the type of protection available is just like having a firefighter on duty in our home twenty-four hours a day. The installation of smoke detectors reduces the risk from negative effects of fire significantly, while the installation of a residential fire sprinkler system and smoke detectors is 99.6% successful in saving the lives of people from fire. The installation of fire sprinklers will also significantly reduce property loss.

So the question is why don’t we do more to protect our loved ones? The answer is not as clear-cut as you may think. The technology of smoke detectors and residential fire sprinklers today is far more superior than it was 25 years ago when I wrote my first letter to the editor, but the obstacles for the acceptance of the fire protection systems remain the same: the lack of understanding about residential fire sprinkler systems and “money”. Simply put, residential sprinkler systems are nothing more than a regular household water system, very similar to the plumbing system already in the homes, with sprinkler heads. These fire sprinkler heads only activate when they are heated up by a fire, and typically only one sprinkler head activates in a fire, not all of heads as depicted in movies. The cost of the sprinkler systems in a new home is about the same as a new stainless steel refrigerator. Therein lies the problem. Given a choice by the home owner to have a new stainless steel refrigerator in their home or a residential fire sprinkler, the vast majority of homeowners will choose the new refrigerator.

I hope that in 25 years, if I am still around, that I would not have to write another letter about a family needlessly dying in a house fire. Rather I would prefer to read about a family who had escaped from a fire that was shortly extinguished by a residential fire sprinkler and was waiting for their carpets to dry so they can move back home again that day. This would allow me the great satisfaction of knowing that I will never have to write this letter again.

Rick Ruh has over 30 years experience in Fire and Building Codes. He is presently the Fire Marshal of Cherokee County Fire and Emergency Services, a medium size department 25 miles north of Atlanta, GA. Prior to that he spent five years with TVA Fire and Life Safety as a Fire Protection Consultant serving some of the largest retailers in world. He has worked for the City of Raleigh, NC as both a Building and Fire Code Official providing plan review services to the design community. Rick retired from Broward County Fire Rescue (Ft. Lauderdale, Fl) as a Battalion Chief responsible for technical services in the plan review section.