TO REVIEW INDUSTRY LEADING WHITE PAPER BY BUDDY DEWAR,

“Residential Fire Sprinklers and Housing Economics” click Here

U.S. Fire Administration Civilian Fire Fatality Notification The Nation’s news media is reporting the following residential fire (non-arson) fatalities Update

Click here to see update

The U.S. Fire administration and the National Fire Academy announce the availability of the new National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) 5.0 Self Study (Q494) online course. Serving as an introduction to NFIRS 5.0, this self-study course provides an overview of the data collection system, its modules, and data conversion issues. Moreinformation and access to this course is available on NFA Online. Additional NFIRS-related training can be found on the USFA Web site.

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The federal government is creating a five-star grading system for nursing homes and will require all nursing homes nationwide to have fire sprinkler systems by 2013.  As of today, 80% of nursing homes nationwide have fire sprinklers, 15% have partial fire sprinkler systems. Older nursing homes that have escaped modern regulations that require sprinkler systems to protect residents from fire, will now have to get the systems
installed, if they want to continue to serve Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. These facilities will have a five-year phase-in period to be fully compliant with the new rule.

An historic day in Minneapolis yesterday. The IRC Coalition was successful in having fire sprinklers required in all new Townhouses and single family dwellings as part of the next edition of the Model Code. While this still needs to be adopted at the local and state level it is a monumental achievement for our industry. The effective date for home sprinklers will be January 1, 2011. Thanks to Fred Benn and his residential committee, Jim Dalton and his Public Fire Protection Team, Buddy Dewar and his Regional Managers, Tom Lia and the Northern Illinois Fire Sprinkler Advisory Board and Jeff Shapiro and the IRC coalition for spending hundreds of man-hours in making this happen.

Click Here for A Discussion Guide on the New IRC Requirement for Residential Fire Sprinklers.

Let us help you fulfill your contractor CEU requirements for re-certification. Download a copy of the Florida Fire Sprinkler Association’s “Catalog of Course Offerings” to find out how we can help you.

Florida Administrative Code (FAC) 69A-46, passed on May 18, 2008. 69A-46, in part addresses ITM requirements for tagging fire sprinkler systems.

Read complete law by clicking HERE.

There is a LOT of work going on in many states on both the “IRC” issue and issues related to “ITM”. Just as a reminder, there are links (left side of home page) of the NFSA website at: www.nfsa.org for both national IRC and ITM updates. It is a good place to view current status of those items. The link will take you to a map..simply click on the state to read the update. Also,m the page will list the Regional Manager and Area Director for that state. If you have specific questions about their states, all of their contact information is listed. Not only are we working hard in Florida…that same activity is taking place in 49 other states – makes it clear why we are the “Voice of the
Fire Sprinkler Industry”.

Make sure you are up to date on the latest information concerning Service Contracts.

You can get the latest updates at the Area Interest Meetings or click here to see the current law.

In Florida your Fire Sprinkler Associations had a major contribution to the recently adopted NFPA-25 2011 edition. A task group under the direction of the Board of our associations was working to improve implementation of Florida new red tag/green tag regulations and endorsed a spreadsheet which had been pulled together by John Lake of Wiginton a committee task group member. This attached spreadsheet was then shown to the NFPA-25 committee who with some minor changes recommended this spreadsheet for adoption nationally. NFPA voted to accepted this at its annual convention in Las Vegas this year. Once again your associations and its great team approach to solving industry problems has lead the way.

Even though this is 2011 version and Florida is on 2002 edition this information can be of help in all of us being more consistent in implementing the Red/Green tag regulations. On the spread sheet impairment would be 24 hour red and non critical would be 30 day red. The only area that needs to be cleaned up for Florida is some grey area on those items shown as critical in NFPA-25 and are not defined as 24 hour or 30 day. I believe the Association task group will address this soon.

Please click HERE to see the spreadsheet.