By Robert Jordan – Valley Times

PLEASANTON — Announcing residential fires in the city isn’t in Phil Blank’s job description.

But for the past three years, the chairman of the city’s Planning Commission has brought up the subject every time a residential fire occurs. Wednesday’s meeting was no exception, as Blank noted that a fire Tuesday had caused an estimated $485,000 damage to a west side condo.

Blank hopes he won’t have to broach the topic again if the city adopts a residential sprinkler ordinance for all new homes built in Pleasanton.

“Livermore already has it, and they have not had a single fatality,” Blank said. Livermore adopted its ordinance about 10 years ago. “If you look at the statistics, sprinkler systems save lives and dramatically reduce fire damage,” he said.

Blank isn’t alone in his efforts. He and other city officials and Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department personnel have been working toward getting the city to adopt a residential sprinkler ordinance that would apply to all new homes.

The city’s current sprinkler ordinance applies to all single-family homes of 8,000 square feet or more. The ordinance also covers homes located outside the five-minute response area and ones in high fire-hazard areas.

Pleasanton’s chief building and safety official, George Thomas, and Livermore-Pleasanton fire marshal Scott Deaver are working with the current ordinance and hope to change the language in September to require sprinklers in all new
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homes. No date has been set for those changes to come before the council for approval.

“There isn’t anything that you can do more for life safety than residential sprinklers,” said Livermore-Pleasanton fire chief Bill Cody, who has 31 years experience in the firefighting business. “Most lives lost in fires are in residences. That is where we want to provide the most fire protection, in addition to the protection that smoke detectors provide.”

Cody said that fires in homes equipped with sprinklers are smaller because the fire is contained to the room of origin.

And despite what people see in movies, home sprinklers don’t all activate when a fire occurs and flood the house. Instead, the systems in today’s homes are designed to go off in the room where the fire occurs. They are designed to keep the ceiling temperature cooler and to not allow the radiant heat to mushroom out and spread.

Concerns over water damage and the cost of installing sprinkler systems have been among the hang-ups in getting an ordinance passed. But both Deaver and Cody point out that most of the claims about water damage come from the misconception that all sprinkler heads are activated in a fire.

A study by Fred Benn, president of Advanced Automatic Sprinkler Inc. in Hayward and a member of the state fire marshal’s Automatic Extinguishing Systems Advisory Committee, found the cost of sprinklers for a new home with a mortgage of $400,000 would increase the monthly payments by $3.04 per month.

Deaver said there is talk about California adopting a statewide ordinance. Assistant state fire marshal Tonya Hoover, who once served as fire marshal for the Moraga-Orinda Fire District, couldn’t be reached for comment.

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