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Recent fires stir concerns about adequacy of state's fire sprinkler requirementsQuestions are being raised about the adequacy of the state's fire sprinkler requirements following the burning of a Redwood City apartment building last week that lacked that key piece of safety equipment. Like tens of thousands of Bay Area apartment buildings, the 73-unit Terrace Apartments complex, built in 1963, was not required to have sprinklers. A nearly identical fire at a 1960s-era building blocks away, also without sprinklers, killed a man in July and sent 18 people to hospitals. Even though the state in 1989 mandated fire sprinklers in new apartments, and despite the overwhelming consensus among firefighters that sprinklers save lives and property, state law does not require them to be retrofitted in older structures, where millions of Californians live. Why? "There is a perception out there that these things are prohibitively expensive," said Craig Oliver, president of California Building Officials, a statewide organization. "I admit they are not real cheap, but what value do you put on people's lives?" The head of a state apartment owners group bluntly agreed that landlords' reluctance to bear the cost is the reason that most older apartment buildings haven't been retrofitted with sprinklers. "Show me the money," said Dan Faller, president of the Apartment Owners Association of California, Inc., which represents more than 20,000 owners. "We always go back to who is going to pay for it. If they're going to pass a law like that, where's the money?" He said tenants who want fire sprinklers don't "have to rent that apartment if it doesn't have the amenities they want."
MERCURYNEWS.COM