Most of the time, the sprinklers actually extinguish the fire completely, before the fire department even arrives.
If you DON'T have a fire sprinkler system, when the fire department arrives, they WILL BE discharging AT THE VERY LEAST, 100 GPM from every fire hose that they are using. That's minimum. Per hose.
When you see water being sprayed from an elevated ladder truck, that will be discharging anywhere from 250-1,000 GPM of water onto the fire and building. And your building, and all of its contents, will be completely destroyed. Forever.
Lets go through two scenarios.
Scenario #1 - You Do Not Have a Fire Sprinkler System
1:00 am - Your entire family is sleeping. A fire starts in your basement (BTW-worst place to have a fire).
1:02 am - The fire starts to grow, burning all of the plastic storage bins full of papers and clothes that you have surrounding your heater, where the fire started.
1:05 am - The smoke from the fire reaches the old battery operated smoke detector at the top of the basement stairs, but does not signal, because you took the battery out of it.
1:10 am - The fire is growing bigger, and has started to penetrate into the first floor, when smoke from the fire finally reaches a smoke detector that operates.
*** TEN MINUTES HAVE PASSED SINCE THE FIRE HAS STARTED ***
1:11 am - You get out of bed to see why the smoke detector is going off only to find your family room filling with smoke.
1:12 am - You run back upstairs and wake your spouse and children screaming that the house is on fire and you all need to get out.
1:13 am - You collect your family and run out the front door, leaving it wide open (which inadvertently provides a whole lot of draft and fresh oxygen to feed the fire).
1:14 am - You realize that you haven't called 911 yet, so you call them (thankfully you remembered your cell phone).
1:16 am - The 911 center starts to dispatch the first fire department. Because of the alarm in your voice, they automatically send a "Full Response" for a working fire.
1:19 am - The first chief goes on radio responding from his house (Volunteer Fire Company).
1:20 am - You see flames inside your first floor windows. The fire has been burning for 20 minutes.
1:25 am - The first fire engine goes on radio, as they are leaving the fire house.
1:26 am - The chief arrives on scene. He makes sure that everyone is out of the house. Then calls for a second alarm, because there are flames breaking through every window on the first floor, and there is now smoke puffing out of the second floor windows.
1:30 am - The fire engine arrives on scene. You can hear many more sirens in the distance.
1:31 am - The chief declares that this is going to be a defensive operation, and that no firefighter is going inside the house, since all of the occupants are out. The fire has had too much burn time. The house will be a complete loss, no matter what the efforts are.
1:33 am - The first water is being put on your house. The fire is now coming out of every window that you can see. Your house, your pictures, your most precious belongings....gone.....forever.
Less than an hour ago, you were sleeping comfortably in your bed. Your family safe and sound. Life was good.
Now, there are 35 firefighters in your front yard, back yard, in your driveway, on your street. You count five streams of water being sprayed onto your house. Three are from hoses, two are from elevated ladders.
Lets do some math. Each hose is flowing 100 gallons of water every minute, for a total of 300 GPM. Each ladder is flowing 500 gallons of water per minute, for a total of 1,000 GPM. For a GRAND TOTAL of 1,300 gallons of water being dumped onto your fire engulfed house. Every minute. This could go on for 30...45....60 minutes!! 30,000 to 70,000 gallons of water over that time period.
Scenario #2 - You DO have a Fire Sprinkler System
1:00 am - Your entire family is sleeping. A fire starts in your basement (BTW-still the worst place to have a fire).
1:02 am - The fire starts to grow, burning all of the plastic storage bins full of papers and clothes that you have surrounding your heater, where the fire started.
1:03 am - The sprinkler head that is in the vicinity of the origin of the fire, actuates. Just one. Not every sprinkler head (that's only in Hollywood)
1:04 am - The smoke from the fire reaches the old battery operated smoke detector at the top of the basement stairs, but does not signal, because you took the battery out of it.
1:04 am - Your fire alarm signals, because there is a device that actuates when water is flowing from one sprinkler (this is called a water flow alarm switch)
1:05 am - You wake up, and go downstairs to investigate why your sprinkler bell is going off. You open the door to the basement, and you see smoke (yes - there is still smoke- sprinklers aren't magic)
1:06 am - You run back upstairs and wake your spouse and children telling them that the sprinkler system is going off, and there is smoke in the basement.
1:07 am - You collect your family and run out the front door, leaving it wide open (which inadvertently provides a whole lot of draft and fresh oxygen to feed the fire, if the fire was still burning).
1:08 am - You realize that you haven't called 911 yet, so you call them (thankfully you remembered your cell phone).
*** ONLY EIGHT MINUTES HAVE PASSED SINCE THE FIRE HAS STARTED ***
The fire company gets dispatched, comes out, and they don't even need to fill their hoses with any water. They bring a small, 2 1/2 gallon fire extinguisher with them into the basement. But they don't need it, because the sprinkler system extinguished the fire. The Chief and the first crew of firefighters already turned the sprinkler system off. They turned it off at 1:20 am. Twenty minutes after the fire had started.
Lets do some math. One sprinkler head actuated. It was discharging 10 gallons of water per minute. It flowed water for twenty minutes. 20 minutes x 10 gallons per minute equals 200 gallons. The sprinkler discharged 200 gallons of water from the time it first operated, until it was shut off by the fire department.
Scenario #1 - Your life is pretty much ruined. For a long time anyway.
Scenario #2 - You are going to be inconvenienced for the night. And you have some leg work to do...get the water and smoke removal experts in. Get the sprinkler contractor out to fix the sprinkler head that saved your house, and possibly your life. Get through your insurance claim. But you'll get through it. Rather easily.
This is not hyperbole. This is not an exaggeration by any means. This is the truth. 100% true.
Don't wait until it's too late.
321FireProtection.com
(484)321-FIRE
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