Ask the Person Who Owns One

One of the people who has installed a sprinkler system in his house is the Chair of HFSC, Gary Keith. “We’ve just had our 20-year-old house retrofitted with a residential fire sprinkler system. As the chair, it was something I knew I should do. As the father of three kids, it was something I knew I had to do.” Another believer in fire sprinklers is Lonni Jackson, Chief of the Bensenville, IL Fire Department, who is currently having a system installed.

Chief Jackson sees notification as the weak point of any fire protection service. Often a fire is not discovered until it blows out the windows of a house and by then “you might as well get a bag of marshmallows, because you’re not going to save the house.”

According to Chief Jackson, fire sprinkler systems are particularly important because homes are the most combustible structures allowed by law. No commercial building, many of which are required to have sprinklers, could be built like a house because of safety concerns.

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