Guest Opinion: Sprinkler critic offers sources Guest Opinion: Sprinkler critic offers sources (April 13, 2005)

By Mike Lambert

In Peter Carpenter's April 6 letter, he makes an accusation that I have never documented the "various sources" of data that I have presented to the City Council, and as usual, Mr. Carpenter is misinformed.

In every presentation and letter to our City Council over the past year I have cited my sources, and to repeat them once again, they are: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Fire Administration, California Office of State Fire Marshal, National Fire Protection Association, Menlo Park Fire Protection District, the Scottsdale Report and Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition.

But prior to this accusation, he states in his letter, "in the important discussion regarding the value of residential fire sprinklers, the fire district board and its professional staff have put well-documented facts on the table...," but no one has seen the purported "facts" or the sources. The fire district maintains a Website (http://www.menlofire.com) and I suggest that they use it to display their "well-documented facts."

And as we see, the reader is once again pulled into the home fire sprinkler debate and the "politics" surrounding this issue is again coming to a boil. Will the Menlo Park City Council endorse the fire district's latest request, the requirement for the installation fire sprinkler systems in designated single family homes and the bigger question, who will be impacted by this ordinance?

To me this is largely an issue of choice. Do you want to be able to make the decision for your own home (as is now allowed) to install a sprinkler system that reliable data concludes is very expensive, problematic and relatively ineffective when compared to other devices intended to increase home fire safety, or do you want the fire district to make the decision for you?

The best decisions are made by weighing the evidence on an issue, not the politics surrounding it, because politics are often based on distortion and exaggeration (something the fire district is known to do). There is a very simple method of taking the politics out of this issue and that is for the fire district to take their request to Sacramento and be reviewed by the State Building Standards Commission, instead of our City Council.

If this proposal has merit, then the state could enact a sprinkler ordinance for single-family homes that would be uniform for the entire state. That's why our building code is called the "Uniform Building Code." But, the fire district absolutely refuses to take this path because they know their arguments and justifications are so weak.

Please be aware that our State Building Standards Commission has the technical ability, far surpassing our own building department and City Council, to make an informed and unbiased decision on this matter. Michael Lambert is a Menlo Park resident and an architect who has studied the sprinkler issue.

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