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.

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”.