In two recent articles, I’ve been critical of local fire chiefs for vetoing design starndards — width of streets, turning radii of street corners — preferred by developers hewing to the New Urbanism school of design. New Urbanists like narrow streets with short turning radii, which are geared to pedestrian traffic. Fire chiefs prefer wider streets with wider turning radii that their big rigs can negotiate. (See “Design by Fire Truck” and “Fire Trucks and Bike Lanes“.)
Now Tom Owens, fire chief for the City of Fairfax and chairman of the Northern Virginia Fire Chiefs Committee, has written, asking me to tell the “other side of the story.” I think he can tell his side of the story better than I, so I will quote him in full:
I read with great interest your article “Design by Fire Truck”, in which you tied community development plans to the design of today’s contemporary firefighting apparatus. There is without question a direct correlation between the configuration of neighborhood streets and the need for safe and effective access for fire and emergency medical vehicles; however, I would encourage you to look deeper into the many other aspects related to a fire department’s strong stance on unencumbered access to neighborhoods.
The “built environment” that fire departments must cope with have changed dramatically over the years. In their legitimate quest to keep housing as affordable as possible, building materials used have become lighter weight, construction techniques have become less substantial, many neighborhoods have homes built with zero lot lines that set the stage for rapid fire spread to neighboring properties, these homes are no longer filled with ordinary wood and paper based furnishings…everything is high density plastic and foam based materials that burn rapidly and generate intense fire spread. The level of heat output experienced today results in early structural failure due to the lightweight construction mentioned
above.Fire Departments have continuously offered THE solution to the majority of these problems. Residential Fire Sprinkler Systems…..yet…..this same community of urban planners and developers resists building fire protection into these homes. They fight us in the general assembly when we propose such building code requirements and then complain when we insist on effective access into neighborhoods.
If you talk to most Fire Chiefs and Fire Marshals, they will tell you that a Fire Department is very willing to make tradeoffs to requirements IF developers will build more fire protection into these homes.
Owens raises legitimate concerns: the increased flammability of contemporary housing and the danger inherent with putting family dwellings so close together, as New Urbanists are wont to do. I’m delighted to bring those issues to light.
Following Owens’ logic, though, it sounds like a potential answer presents itself, and it’s not getting the General Assembly to mandate residential fire sprinklers. Let the marketplace decide on a case by case basis. If New Urbanist developers want pedestrian-friendly streetscapes badly enough, and if the local fire chiefs are willing to go along, let them install the residential fire sprinkler systems in exchange for the desired street standards.
