Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service is supporting the National Fire Chiefs Council’s (NFCC) National Sprinkler Week campaign.
The campaign runs from Monday 16th – 22nd May and is raising awareness of the benefits of sprinkler systems in keeping buildings and people safe from fire.
NFCC are particularly concerned about specific types of buildings in the UK including warehousing. Building regulations differ across building types in the UK and evidence shows that non-sprinklered buildings can often lead to large scale incidents which impact local communities resulting in loss of property and economic opportunities.
Fire sprinklers are widely recognised as the single most effective method for fighting the spread of fires in their early stages.
Councillor Andy Crump, Portfolio Holder for Fire and Rescue and Community Safety at Warwickshire County Council said: “Sprinklers are an important tool to bolster fire safety in place such as commercial warehouses and fires in these facilities can lead to very large ongoing incidents which take huge amounts of fire service resource to bring under control and extinguish. If you are a business owner or responsible for a warehouse in Warwickshire then please consider the benefits of installing a sprinkler system.”
Research by the NFCC and the National Fire Sprinkler Network (NFSN) found that sprinkler systems operate on 94% of occasions so are very reliable and when they do operate they extinguish or contain the fire on 99% of occasions. The result is sprinklers reduce injuries by at least 80%, reduce property damage by 90% and substantially reduce damage to the environment from fire.
Jonathan Dyson NFCC Lead for Sprinklers, said: “The evidence speaks for itself; our research proves that sprinklers are very effective and provide strong fire safety protections as part of a fire safety package.”
Find out more about business fire safety using sprinkler systems on Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service’s website.