They house some of the most vulnerable people on the UC Irvine campus--infants to preschoolers. But these four buildings, like about 135 others on campus, lack firefighting sprinklers.
That doesn't mean the buildings have no defense against fires. Sprinklers are just one piece of the increasingly sophisticated equipment installed to protect lives and property, including alarms and sensors, as well as fire-retardant construction materials and building designs that contain blazes.
After a blaze at UC Irvine's Frederick Reines Hall on Monday, the question of how best to protect campus buildings against fires has set off a debate between campus officials and firefighters, especially since state fire codes that govern the university are less stringent than the county code.
Firefighters would like sprinklers in every building. UC Irvine officials say they're not required and that water can make a chemical fire worse. Chancellor Ralph Cicerone has pledged to look into the issue.
The fire started after a doctoral student's experiment exploded in a chemistry lab on the second floor of Reines.
Firefighters credited fire doors and walls with keeping the blaze at bay, even though there were no sprinklers.
After the fire, the campus released a map showing that about two-thirds of its buildings are without sprinklers, while many other buildings have them only in selected areas. Among the more vulnerable buildings were the child-care centers and two student dormitories with no sprinklers, and a third dormitory with the equipment only in the living room area, not the bedrooms.
Campus architect Rebekah Gladson defends the use of other firefighting measures, saying that by the time sprinklers turn on, it's too late. "You want an early warning system to get people out," she said.
Reines opened in 1990 but was constructed under the 1979 building codes that were in place at the time. The Orange County code required sprinklers. But because UC Irvine is owned by the state, the California code took precedence, and it did not require sprinklers.
At issue are fire codes that sometimes leave even fire officials uncertain about what is needed in a given building. Not only can state and federal buildings have different standards than privately owned ones next door, but those standards depend on how big the building is, what it's used for, how close it is to a fire station and a host of other issues.
