A bill to go before the Anne Arundel County Council might have helped save Kendall Brown’s life.
Brown, 42, died Oct. 13 when his Bay Ridge house went ablaze in the early morning.
The single-story house had no sprinklers.
Council Chairwoman Cathy Vitale, R-Severna Park, is introducing a bill that would require fire sprinklers to be installed in new single-family houses as part of an effort to reduce fatalities and property loss in residential fires.
“The day this bill was introduced, there was a fire in a kitchen of a town house with sprinklers, and there was little damage because the fire was put right out,” she said.
The bill does not include existing houses. All town houses and apartments are required to have sprinklers.
Vitale, whose husband works in the fire department, had been mulling the bill for more than a year and saw the fire in which Brown became the fourth person to die in a fire in the county as motivation to move forward with the bill.
Meanwhile, between November 2007 and January 2008, sprinklers averted three residential fires, including a fire in a Crofton town house caused by a 6-year-old who was playing with matches.
In all three cases, no one was killed and damage was minimal, said Battalion Chief Matthew Tobia of the county Fire Department.
“The reason why the media doesn’t find out about these fires is that they are contained to one room, there is no loss of life and there is less than $10,000 worth of damage,” Tobia added.
Vitale also pointed to the International Code Council, which develops commonly practiced building codes and recently added sprinklers to requirements for new houses.
Prince George’s had a similar requirement in its building code approved in the early 1990s, and since then fatalities have dropped, fire officials said.
Harford also requires sprinklers in new houses, but in Howard, they are optional.
But home builders are opposing the Anne Arundel measure, saying failing pipes could cause water damage and adding sprinklers would drive up the costs of houses by $4,000.
“It doesn’t add anything to a house as far as safety and gives people a false sense of security,” said Michael DeStefano, a member of the Anne Arundel Home Builders Association.
DeStefano said hard-wired smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are more useful in avoiding fatalities, and houses can suffer severe damage without a fire if the pipes aren’t properly maintained.
There will likely be amendments to the bill during Monday’s meeting, and a final vote will be pushed in December, officials said.
