NEWRY – More than 30 people scrutinized a proposed new fire protection ordinance Thursday night that seeks to require all new homes in Newry to have fire sprinkler systems installed.
Topics and questions raised during the 2-hour public informational hearing covered nearly every aspect of sprinkler systems, fire ponds, and the town’s inability to expand its fire station to meet the looming needs of 150 proposed housing lots.
“I thought we had an excellent turnout with a lot of very pertinent and honorable questions asked,” said Newry Assistant Fire Chief Bruce Pierce, who authored the ordinance and facilitated the meeting, along with other Newry firefighters.
“We’re getting the feedback we need to clarify and look at the wording of the ordinance to better understand what we’re looking for,” Pierce said.
The ordinance establishes rules governing the installation of sprinkler systems for new construction dwellings with more than 2,000 square feet of finished living space within town.
But rather than limit sprinkler installations to new development, Pierce would like to see all homes in Newry get sprinklers.
“New equipment isn’t going to save lives. We’ll do our best to get there in time, but you saw the video. In three minutes, that house was gone,” he said.
Pierce was talking about one of two videos shown that revealed, with controlled burns, the speed in which a fire can spread through homes without sprinklers.
In less than five minutes the home’s living room in the video was engulfed.
But in the next burn inside a house with a sprinkler installed, in less than three minutes, heat from the fire activated the sprinkler which kept the fire at bay.
“Sprinklers provide a margin of safety. They’re the single most important thing you can put in a home today,” Pierce said.
Fire protection engineer Eric J. Ellis of the Maine Fire Marshal’s Office in Augusta assisted Pierce.
“In 92 percent of house fires, one or two sprinkler heads puts out the fires,” Ellis said. “Sprinklers are not designed to save property. They’re designed to slow a fire enough to give you 10 minutes time to get out of the house.”
Ellis credited use of smoke detectors and sprinkler systems in Maine with limiting fatality rates from house fires to two dozen people a year.
“Before sprinklers and smoke detectors, that figure was double, and triple, and more for fatality rates here,” he said.
Several towns across Maine are now trying to do what Newry’s doing: pass a fire protection ordinance that requires installation of home sprinkler systems.
“From the time a smoldering fire inside a home bursts into flames, within three to five minutes, that house is uninhabitable. By the time the fire department finds out about it and gets to your house, it’s marshmallow time,” Ellis said.
Despite growing increasingly frustrated with the process, Pierce has kept the ordinance drive alive in hopes of saving lives in the long run.
“I’m optimistic. I think it’s something that we really have to get in place, because development is definitely creating a burden on this Fire Department,” Pierce said.
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