Building Fire Safety Codes

Discover the crucial role that building fire codes play in saving lives in the latest episode of Fire Headlines by Western Fire Chiefs Association (WFCA).

The Firefighters Association of the State of New York is working on legislation to decrease residential fire deaths in the state, as New York is leading the nation with 45 home fire fatalities in the first three months of 2023. An article shared by the Daily Dispatch notes steps that the Firefighters Association is taking to encourage fire safety, including increased building inspections and strategies to encourage people to invest in smoke alarms. Chiefs Bob Horton and Jeff Buchanan discuss these incentives for fire safety.

Building Code Policies

The reason for high home fire risks in New York is because of the densely populated areas that often have higher concentrations of older housing and commercial buildings. Additionally, while the number of fires is decreasing, fires are starting more quickly and burning more intensely, which gives firefighters less time to reach the building and contain the fire. Jeff says, “Practically speaking, getting as far upstream as you can in reducing fire death […] you have to prevent the fire from happening in the first place.”

New York put forth a measure to fund increased building inspections in multi-family residential and commercial buildings in an effort to enforce fire codes. There is often tension in the local government about these state mandates. Bob explains, “There’s always a fight, politically, on local control […] versus, let’s say, the state of New York adopting a code that goes statewide. There’s usually a lot of pushback for that because the counties want to have control over what those codes look like.” Jeff notes the effectiveness of collaboration between renters and management groups to meet fire code requirements.

Fire Safety Tools

Host Inanna notes that the technology to save lives can be as simple and universal as a smoke alarm. In an effort to encourage residents to purchase these tools, New York suspends sales tax on smoke and carbon monoxide detectors during the month of October. Bob and Jeff are not sure that this is a strong enough incentive to buy them, but they do emphasize how effective they are in increasing public safety.

You can email Fire Headlines at [email protected].

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