New homes, apartments may be required to have sprinklers, fire alarms
By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer
Town building rules would have to be changed if Carrboro, the most densely packed municipality in North Carolina, wants to reduce the threat of property loss and injuries from fire.
That’s the conclusion in a report to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen delivered Tuesday night. In a meeting at Town Hall, Fire Chief Travis Crabtree outlined a number of ways the town can improve fire safety including new home and apartment construction requirements.
Crabtree was asked by town officials to review recent fires and offer ideas about how the town can do a better job at preventing fires such as the one last September at building G of Colonial Village at Highland Hills that killed one person and left 20 residents homeless.
The chief’s report included a breakdown of causes of fires and a menu of proposals for reducing the town’s risk. One of the challenges, he said, is that the town has a large number of apartments and town homes. Getting at fires quickly, before they can spread to other dwellings, is a common thread in the chief’s set of recommendations.
They include drafting new building codes for the construction and retrofit of both multi-family dwellings and single-family homes. Some of the recommendations are fairly sweeping, like limiting exteriors to brick or hardiplank and requiring sprinkler systems. Crabtree said the town should also consider changing landscaping requirements, including making sure pine straw, which burns faster and with a much higher flame, is not close to any dwellings.
What fire crews saw as they arrived at the scene of the Highland Hills fire in September, 2007.
Crabtree and Town Manager Steve Stewart acknowledged that many of the recommendations, such as automatic fire alarms and sprinkler systems, would be seen as expensive. Some changes would also likely require the General Assembly to pass enabling legislation.
Crabtree emphasized that many of the steps can help reduce insurance costs. More importantly, some of the key steps would have prevented most of the large apartment fires that claimed lives and property. He showed the board a photo of what fire crews saw when they arrived at the Highland Hills fire, which claimed the life of Gloria Ines Suarez. Two other residents were injured trying to escape the flames.
The fire, he said, had been burning for 28 minutes before crews were dispatched. The photo showed flames towering over most of one half of building G, which burned to the ground. Had the building had an automatic fire alarm, crews would have gotten to the scene long before the fire got to that point.
Many of the larger fires, Crabtree pointed out, started in either storage spaces or balconies. Requiring sprinkler systems to be extended to those areas, he said, would have stopped those fires from spreading. The cost of including those areas in a sprinkler system would cost roughly $150 per unit.
Although current rules require multi-family buildings to have sprinkler systems, many Carrboro apartment complexes were built before the requirement and do not have them.
The board of aldermen agreed to have town staff and the town attorney review the list of recommendations and present a proposal for action by the board.
In other action, the board:
• established a project budget of $1,303,000 for the repair and resurfacing of Weaver Street;
• modified the arts committee membership rules to designate one seat for an ArtsCenter representative;
• canceled the May 6 board meeting because it conflicts with the state’s primary Election Day;
• accepted a grant for the purchase of a live scan fingerprint system;
• and adopted a resolution in support of workers’ rights and unionization efforts at the Smithfield Foods processing facility in Tar Heel.
The resolution encourages local markets to consider not carrying Smithfield products and requires board members to refrain from purchasing or consuming Smithfield Foods products “until such time as these critical issues are resolved.â€