Fire Sprinkler Incentive Act

The National Volunteer Fire Council strongly supports the passage of the Fire Sprinkler Incentive Act, which would provide tax incentives for the voluntary installation and retrofitting of automatic sprinklers in buildings. This bill would reduce the tax depreciation time on non-residential real property from 39 years to only 5. While this tax incentive may appear sizeable, benefits of passage include lower local fire department costs, increased loan activity, reduced insurance claims and premium costs, larger numbers of retrofitting and installation jobs, and the generation of payroll tax revenue.

 

The importance of automatic fire sprinkler systems was tragically demonstrated in February 2003 when 99 people were killed in a pyrotechnic fire at a nightclub in Rhode Island. Three days earlier, there was another pyrotechnic fire in a nightclub in Minnesota. That establishment had an automatic fire sprinkler system and the fire did not cause a single injury.

 

The benefits of fire sprinkler systems have long been known. In fact, the National Fire Protection Association has no record of a fire killing more than two people in a public assembly, educational, institutional or residential building with a complete and fully operational automatic fire sprinkler system. The effectiveness of sprinkler systems in extinguishing fires or extending the time available for firefighters to respond is indisputable. Unfortunately, due to the costs of implementation, there has been little movement amongst property owners to install these systems.

 

Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI) re-introduced the Fire Sprinkler Incentive Act on February 25, 2009, along with 55 original co-sponsors. The bill number is H.R. 1194. On January 22, 2010, Senator Thomas Carper introduced the Senate companion bill, S. 2947.