Borough Councils
November 13, 2003

Borough Council Members
Fairfield Borough, Carroll Valley Borough,
Liberty Township, Hamiltonban Township

Dear Members of the Borough Council:

Recent Risk Assessments made by the leadership of Fairfield Fire and EMS, in conjunction with the proposition of drastically increasing the number of residential and commercial units within our coverage area has led to the issue of life safety, our primary concern. As a volunteer department, we rely on the community in which we serve as well as the surrounding Fire and EMS departments to meet the life- and property- saving requirements we are sworn to protect. With the dynamic nature of our growing community, it is essential that we take a proactive approach to these requirements.

More and more communities across Maryland are adopting residential sprinkler ordinances with College Park in recent weeks joining with other jurisdictions such as Mount Airy, Rockville and Gaithersburg to name just a few. In addition to life safety aspects, these systems increase property values and make it possible for fire departments to far better accomplish the saving of lives unlike any time in history.

As part of our continuing commitment to improved levels of fire protection in our response area, the members of Fairfield Fire and EMS must be ever aware of issues regarding the fire threat facing citizens and businesses alike. This is not only our moral duty but is considered a level of care responsibility as outlined by the "Standard for Volunteer Fire Department Deployment," known as Standard 1720 as issued by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).

All national research that went into the establishment of this standard clearly demonstrates that we, like most fire departments, in communities both small and large, cannot be expected to respond quickly enough to always save people's lives because most fires occur so rapidly and produce so much smoke that inhabitants are often likely to die before we arrive.

Although our department has the resources and personnel to provide the best level of manual fire suppression, we can't expect to save all threatened properties simply because of a range of constraints from delayed alarm, multiple incidents at the same time and the likelihood of a structure's substantial fire involvement prior to our arrival. These concerns increase at an exponential rate as our community increases in both number of citizens, number of residential and commercial units, and overall square miles.

We feel it is also our obligation to advise you to help us by informing residents that they must install residential sprinkler systems if they expect to survive a fire. While this is the time to mandate such a requirement for new residential construction you already know that existing homes can likewise be retrofitted with sprinklers. It's critical that your work on a residential fire sprinkler ordinance be sustained to require life-saving fire sprinklers.

Although the men and women of Fairfield Fire and EMS are proud of our firefighting capabilities, our role is not to decide the level of acceptable fire risk within the community. Frankly, that is a public policy responsibility that is yours. We have reviewed the plans for the future developments in our area and feel compelled to let you know that both the State and County Fire Marshals and their respective staffs are in complete agreement on the importance of this initiative. They, too, continue to offer their expertise on any aspect of the consideration.
The leadership of Fairfield Fire and EMS has unanimously endorsed this concept and has formally offered to provide any assistance necessary to help area citizens and community leaders alike learn how these systems work as well as how they are installed and maintained.

We genuinely appreciate your great support to our department and our members. Again, if you need anything further, please contact us. Our role in this process is to assist all parties concerned with the most cost-effective and practical fire protection, matching the level of fire threat within the community.

Sincerely,

Kevin Koons email
Fire Chief

David Millstein email
Lieutenant, Board of Directors