The automatic sprinkler system was perfected by Frederick Grinnell in the 1890s. Since that time there have been NO fires involving multiple deaths in a building with a properly maintained sprinkling system!

West Virginia has strongly enforced laws requiring sprinkler systems in buildings meant for people.

Unfortunately, some jurisdictions still fail to require sprinkler systems, even in office buildings and apartment buildings. As a result we now have headlines of 19 people killed in an apartment building fire! That is unconscionable. Was it protected by a sprinkler system? Who owned that building?

Tom Clark

Washington

Retired Risk Management Supervisor, Borg Warner