JEFFERSON CITY, February 20, 2008—State Fire Marshal Randy Cole said a fire sprinkler system in the new addition of the Bourbon Middle School in Crawford County was instrumental in containing and extinguishing a fire Sunday evening in the school’s laundry room.
A State Fire Marshal’s investigator determined the fire originated in a basket of rags sitting on top a clothes dryer in the locked laundry room. The fire cause was determined to be from a chemical reaction between the cleaning agents and residual grease on the rags. Damage was estimated at approximately $1,000.
“Without this sprinkler system, the fire could have been devastating due to the fact that the fire occurred on a Sunday evening when no one was in the building to discover it,” Cole said.
The fire originated within a laundry basket causing a sprinkler head within the sprinkler system in the laundry room area to activate. Bourbon firefighters responded to a fire alarm at the middle school approximately 6:30 p.m. Sunday and quickly discovered the fire had been extinguished by only one functioning sprinkler head. The fire occurred in a laundry room off the cafeteria in a new addition to the school which had been recently completed. The entire new addition is protected throughout by an automatic fire sprinkler system.
Fire Marshal Cole said that although the water from the sprinkler system caused minor water damage, fire damage would have been extensive without the protection from the sprinkler system. Cole applauds the school district for adding the system to the school’s new addition.
“Not only was fire damage minimized, but the school did not experience any interruption to the building’s use as well as avoiding any type of financial impact due to the fire,” Cole said.
Cole adds that this fire protection technology is readily available to the homeowner for residential applications and is affordable. Cole encourages homeowners to explore the use of residential sprinkler systems in their homes and consider them as an option either during construction or as a retrofit into an existing home.