February 12, 2010

Haden B. Brumbeloe, Publisher Fire Protection Contractor Magazine 550 High Street Auburn, Ca 95603 Subject: Sprinkler Report Hi Haden: I have received requests from Brant to write articles for the FPC magazine. I assume the requests go out to all your subscribers and therefore I did not take the requests as being directed specifically at me. I have not prepared a report for the FPC for quite a while, and for good reasons. In the past I have advocated major changes that would make sprinkler installations far more practical and affordable. But your readers do not seem to have any desire to change things. My reports have not produced the changes desired. Meanwhile I have been very active relative the smoke detector problem. Over the past 3 to 4 years Ive posted about 100 articles on Expertclick.com and distributed letters and reports to various organizations (media, authorities, victims, etc.) into the thousands. And, in this case the results have been very encouraging. I estimate that there has been over the past four decades approximately 75,000 fire deaths and perhaps as many as 400,000 injuries due to fire within smoke detector protected homes in America alone, many more overseas. Both the NFPA and UL have been directly involved in this fraud. So, as the revelations continue eventually the public will realize that the corruption within the fire game is many times more destructive than the pedophile priests. When that happens I believe the corruption associated with the sprinkler codes also will receive attention. I am enclosing a few of my reports and I hope you will go to this web site especially and see Smoke Detector Recall: www.TheWorldFireSafetyFoundation.org. I went to Australia two times during 2004 and have since helped develop this organization which has enlisted many new advocates for reform in the United States. See this web site and you will see that reforms are in the wind. I am enclosing a report by T. Seddon Duke dated 1959. Mr. Duke reports (no doubt correctly) that over the prior 34 years electrically supervised fire sprinkler system controlled the fires 99.98 percent of the time. 1

So, in 1959 Mr. Duke provided this fact to the fire protection community including the fire officials: THE FIRE SPRINKLER SYSTEM IS FULLY CAPABLE OF VIRTUALLY ELIMINATING FIRE AS A TREAT TO LIVES AND PROERTY. The fire problem within the United states is described as follows by a federal agency: The U.S. fire problem, on a per capita basis, is one of the worst in the industrial world. To put this in context, the annual losses from floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters combined in the United States average just a fraction of those from fires.Fire in the United States, 13th Edition, Federal Emergency Management Agency Page 1, Oct 2004 So, the fire problem is described as being more destructive than floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. And Mr. Duke reported in 1959 that there was evidence that this problem could be virtually eliminated with a solution that was developed during the latter half of the 19th century. This is rather amazing, isnt it? Beginning during the 1950s I began to research sprinkler design. I discovered that the NFPA and the insurance industry, two organizations that were claiming they were reducing the fire problem, actually had created codes that prevented the installation of sprinklers into nearly all buildings in the United States that were of a type where human life was the primary concern. Factories and warehouses where property, not lives were the primary concern, were the only type of properties that were being protected with sprinklers. Over a period of many years I created major advancements in sprinkler design which would allow all buildings to be sprinkler protected at low cost. For example, I designed a 1.2 million square foot of coverage system for a medical center in Kansas City, Kansas. My design was bid by a sprinkler contractor for approximately 35 cents a square foot. Previously, an NFPA design system had been bid at $2.88 per square foot. Because the hospital was fully protected with my design we were able to reduce the construction cost by an excess of 5 million dollars. Thus, an investment for a properly engineered system costing less than a half million produced a construction cost saving of more than 5 million dollars. Thus, I proved that the elimination of the fire problem in America could be achieved with a savings rather than a cost addition burden. The NFPA and the sprinkler industry used all their powers to suppress the usage of economical systems that had the potential to eliminate the American fire problem. The NFPA claims that about 80 percent of all fire deaths occur within homes. Thats bad enough but not the true story. The NFPA includes automobile crash fire and othe non-building fires. If we consider the building fires where sprinklers are a solution, the percent of fire deaths in homes is about 95 percent. I researched residential sprinkler protection and proved that a home could be protected with the amount of water normal to a home, which is generally in the 5 to 15 gpm range. Thus, even existing homes could be protected with interior low cost pipe only, no need to dig up the front lawn and install a commercial category 1-1/2 or 2 inch line or buy a packaged water supply. I proved that if a sprinkler was to discharge only 5 gpm over an early fire that nearly all would be at least alerted early and that the fires growth would be suppressed sufficiently to at 2

least allow escape unharmed. Of course, in nearly all cases, if occupants were present, and if they had the right tool, that early fire could be snuffed out manually if not automatically. Thus, an economical and practical residential sprinkler system had been technically defined by me. Phil Favro, the state fire marshal of California became interested in the concept of residential sprinklers. So, using me as the advisor relative the engineering criteria, a California Residential Code was created. It became an acceptable design criteria in California. The NFPA was determined that practical residential sprinklers would not be allowed. So fire tests were deliberately rigged and falsified to prove that a home could not be sprinkler protected except 40 gpm was available. Of course this made it virtually impossible to install sprinklers in existing homes and extremely expensive to protect even new construction. Many water companies charged commercial rated for homes that had larger than one inch supplies. The methods used to drive me out of business three times to prevent the growth of practical sprinkler protection can be illustrated by events in Ohio. Ohio had 400 to 500 small care homes for the elderly. Many were in large and older Victorian type homes where up to six elderly people could be housed with care. A regulation was passed to make these homes comply with more modern fireproofing - enclosed stairways fire regulations. The state fire marshal, Bob xxx, gained the cooperation of both the legislators and the nursing homes for an equivalency of compliance. It was agreed by both the state and the nursing home organizations that if the homes were completely sprinkler protected the fireproofing requirements would be waived. The Life Safety System design code that I developed (with research plus the cooperation of a national committee assembled with the cooperation of Charles Morgan, the General Manager of the NFPA) was adopted into the Ohio building code. Thus, the Life Safety Sprinkler code had even more legal authority in Ohio than the NFPA sprinkler codes. The state fire marshal convinced me to relocate to Columbus to protect these nursing homes. Initially all went well. Because the nursing homes did not have the thousand gallon per minute water supplies (sprinkler plus hose streams) that were required by the NFPA code the sprinkler contractors were bidding the installation of 50,000 gallon elevated tanks to meet the NFPA code demands. Thus, the bidding began with about a $50,000 dollar item for the supply. Then, of course there would be some 4 inch steel pipe running below the ceilings in these beautiful homes. All told with tank, underground and interior system the NFPA prices were approaching 100 thousand dollars. The purchase price of such homes was more like $50,000. So, the NFPA system was simply an impossible solution. I was designing copper systems (years ahead of the NFPA recognition), predominantly of one inch size. Nearly all the homes had enough water to supply the practical Life Safety System. But in a few cases I designed a small ground level tank with an excellent (but not UL) centrifugal pump that would supply at least 80 gpm at the needed pressure. My prices were generally in the 9 to 12 thousand range. I designed them and initially the sprinkler contractors would bid them. Before long the sprinkler contractors in the area got together and agreed that they would not bid and install the Patton systems. So I went to the plumbers and they were delighted to bid and install my designs. Then, a nursing home manager, a large one with many patients, asked me 3

if I could teach his plant maintenance man hoe to install the system. It was not a problem because he was experienced in copper installations and, the sprinkler system was merely a copper pipe system with sprinkler heads installed as called for by the plans. So, the NFPA and the sprinkler industry were in a bind because I was designing practical sprinkler systems and they were easy to install. The important thing as I saw it was, we were protecting the lives of of the elderly people and doing it at a price where all nursing homes could afford. Few realize it today but nearly all nursing homes at that time were not sprinkler protected. Indeed, there was great resistance to protecting such buildings. The entire program of protecting the nursing homes in Ohio with sprinklers hit a wall. The inspectors for HEW began to visit the nursing home managers and advise them verbally (never in writing) that if they installed a Patton system they would no longer qualify for medicare payments. Of course this caused the nursing home managers to put the installations on hold. Suddenly, I could not get any systems installed. There were some systems that I would install and for one large nursing home I had the pipe delivered to the site. But the nursing home had not yet paid me even for the pipe. When warned by the HEW inspector, the manager put the installation on hold. Then a fire occurred and a guest at the home was killed. I figured that would finally force the HEW to reconsider the policy of barring the Patton installations. About a week later I received a call from one of my few supporters in Washington. He asked me why my system had failed to control the fire with a death occurring. I told him the pipe was still sitting in the yard, none installed, because of the treats by the HEW. Thats not what they are reporting down here, he relied. Theyre saying a fire occurred and your system failed to control it. With representatives from the Copper industry we went to the Federal Trade Commission in Washington to complain about the HEW inspectors. They obviously had no legal basis for what they were doing. Putting a sprinkler system in a non sprinklered home was not a negative. The Feds had no requirements for sprinklers in nursing homes or hospitals at the time and had actually tried to prevent me from installing sprinklers in Childrens Hospital located in D.C. But thats another story. The attorney representing the FTC that we met with agreed that the HEW inspectors were out of line in their activities. But, when asked what the FTC would do about it, he said, Nothing, it is not our policy for one agency to attack another. The copper industry decided not to sue. The NFPA at the time was telling the copper representatives that NFPA would work things out so that copper pipe would be included in the NFPA code. That happened eventually, but only within the restrictions of the NFPA codes. The industry spent millions working through UL and ended up with criteria that have generally maintained the industry devoid of copper systems. The story of the sprinkler system is as follows briefly: 1. During the 1890s the NFPA and the fire insurers created a sprinkler code that allowed major industrial properties (with an excessive value at risk) to be sprinkler protected. 2. Because non protected properties generated far greater insurance properties the code was written to bar sprinklers from nearly all other building types. 3. There was no effort that I know of to change the codes and policies until I began researching the protection during the 1950s. 4

4. I created systems that could be installed at a fraction of the cost of an NFPA designed system. The designs would apply to all of these type buildings and more: Nursing homes, hospitals, apartments, single family homes, office buildings, high rises, houses of worship, schools, theatres, assembly halls, night clubs, dance halls, hotels, motels, institutional buildings and all buildings where life is especially at risk. 5. The NFPA consistently opposed the recognition of and the marketing of the low cost and fully engineered systems. 6. Various measures were taken to prevent the recognition of and the marketing of these systems. 7. The regulations were not limited to preventing practical sprinklers from being marketed. When I was able to get a national code created for fire detection systems in homes, the NFPA changed their code to promote a defective type of so-called smoke detector. 8. Today defective fire detectors (so-called smoke detectors) are estimated to be installed in at least 80 million U.S. homes. 9. Protective systems that have the potential to reduce fire deaths by as much as 99 percent are available and proven. 10. The NFPA and others have been able to maintain the great majority of homes and other buildings devoid of proper protection that would near totally eliminate fire deaths.