Installing both smoke alarms and a fire sprinkler system reduces the risk of death in a home fire by 82%, relative to having neither.
Facts & Figures*
• Sprinklers typically reduce chances of dying in a fire and the average property loss by one-half to two-thirds compared to where sprinklers are not present.
• NFPA has no record of a fire killing more than two people in a completely sprinklered public assembly, educational,
institutional or residential building where the system was working properly.
• In 1999, 34% of public assembly properties where fires occurred in the U.S. were equipped with sprinklers, compared with 7% of residential properties.
• In 2002, 79% of fires occurred in the home, resulting in 2,670 fire deaths.

Only the sprinkler closest to the fire will activate, spraying water directly on the fire.
Each sprinkler is individually activated by heat. Despite "sight gags" on TV sit-coms, smoke does not trigger sprinkler operation. The rest of the sprinklers in a house will not activate unless there is also a fire in that location. 90% of all home fires are contained with a single sprinkler.

You can use HFSC's How Home Fire Sprinklers Work animated movie in your presentations to demonstrate the reliability of fire sprinkler systems. Watch the movie

* From NFPA's U.S. Experience with Sprinklers and NFPA's Fire Loss in the United States, November 2003, Kimberly D. Rohr.

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