Benefits of Fire Protection

Statistics

Together with smoke alarms, sprinklers cut the risk of dying in a home fire by 82 percent.

People in homes with sprinklers are protected against significant property loss - sprinklers reduce the average property loss by 71 percent per fire.

NFPA has no record of a fire killing more than two people in a completely sprinklered public assembly, educational, institutional or residential building where the system was working properly.

Usually only one or two sprinklers are required to control the fire.

• When wet pipe sprinklers operated, 88 percent of reported fires involved only one or two sprinklers.
• For dry pipe sprinklers, 73 percent involved only one or two sprinklers.

The information above is based on 2003-2006 U.S. reported fires excluding buildings under construction. Sprinklered properties exclude properties with no sprinklers in fire area. Source: U.S. Experience with Sprinklers and Other Automatic Fire Extinguishing Equipment by John R. Hall, Jr., NFPA, Quincy, MA, January 2009.

Click on a graph below to enlarge

Figure 1

Figure 2

Home Fire Sprinkler Demonstration

More Info & Facts:

The Influence of Risk Factors on Sustainable Development - March 2009, FM Global

"Fire risk factors can add up to 14 percent to the carbon emissions over the lifetime of a facility exposed to extensive fire hazards."

Fire sprinklers have been awarded LEED credit points for New Construction. NFSA has joined USGBC in an attempt to highlight the "Green" benefits of fire protection systems.