A 14-year study of hundreds of fires, carried out by the Patrimonial Risk Engineering Group of the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, highlights the importance of fire sprinklers in minimizing property damage, especially in industrial occupations.

The findings supported the notion that the “heavier” the occupation, such as the industrial one, proportionally greater tend to be the damages caused by fires. In this study, for example, while residential fires accounted for 8 percent of the number of serious fires, they constituted only 4 percent of the total estimated damage to those fires. Even within the manufacturing occupations themselves, such as a foundry compared to a watchmaker, more expensive and more damaged fires tend to occur at the heavier end.

In general, in a comparison of estimated fire damage, in industrial occupations without sprinklers versus sprinklers, fires in non-sprinkler installations showed an estimated damage average of US $ 1.9 million, compared to US $ 638,000 in sprinkler installations.

The fundamental point is that when sprinklers are installed in the area of origin and that they function as designed, the fires are almost always kept in a small dimension. Now, we have the comparisons in dollars and cents to prove it.

Source: NFPA Journal Latinoamericano